I wrote a global outlook piece at the end of last year, where I tipped 2013 to be "the year of the slow grind". Following today's latest set of economic predictions, it seems that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is coming round to that way of thinking.

Growth has ground to a halt, real wages are falling and more than 6m people want work but can't find it: yet our chancellor continues to fiddle - with beer duties and the pottery industry - as the British economy flatlines. The inconvenient truth is that George Osborne has become Labour's greatest electoral asset.

I think we can all agree that the level of debt and deficit within government and consumer accounts needs to be reduced in the long-term. Debt is no gift to leave to future generations, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said; "a man in debt is so far a slave".

Faith-based economics (over the last 10 years, not just the last two) got us into this economic mess; it won't get us out of it.

To hope that the commitment to cutting public spending in the name of deficit reduction will be reversed in the face of continuing recession and little effect on the deficit currently seems highly optimistic - the major political parties united as they are in almost unwavering support for it. So long as it continues so will recession.

I find it hard to have a reasoned debate on the role of the state in our political economy - which is what the discussion about size ultimately stems from - on the basis of percentages, or comparisons of percentages between nations/eras.

Everyone agrees growth since 2010 in the UK has been very disappointing. But there has been much debate about why - was it cutting the deficit too quickly, was it the spike in inflation resulting from commodity price rises, was it the impact on confidence from the eurozone?

The most likely outcome of the 6 November elections is that not much is going to change in a relative sense. We foresee a second term for Obama, a (dark) red House of Representatives, and a Senate where the Democrats will win by a hair (although the latter is far from certain).

The rhythmic rise and fall of market sentiment has become depressingly familiar; so much so that I feel like I'm stuck in some sort of time loop, with the same string of events repeating itself over and over again.

With the presidential election coming up in the United States later this year, there are a lot of discussions about the two main parties and what they stand for. Or at least there should be - sometimes it seems as though elections are more like popularity contests than serious decisions made based on policies.