BRITAIN: Muddling to Collapse?

During the past three decades, while other nations have devised all sorts of fancy names for their economic plans, Britain has relied on the ancient formula of "muddling through." As the nation lurched from one economic crisis to another, something—a sudden devaluation of sterling, a new draconian budget, the generosity of foreign lenders —always averted catastrophe at the last moment. Today, the British seem to have run out of expedients to solve their latest and worst crisis. Britain "is going down the drain," says Arthur Burns, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board. At last many Britons are becoming alarmed...