Economic History According To Brown

A weekend gathering of world leaders in Watford heard from Gordon Brown that the world is facing “the first truly global financial crisis”.

Ex-President Bill Clinton, one of the delegates, said: “I’d like to thank Mr Brown for putting me right on the 1929 Wall Street Crash. I thought it was a global collapse of confidence in the banking system that led to a decade of worldwide unemployment and poverty, and ushered Hitler into power, ultimately leading to the Second World War and the deaths of 50 million people. I now realise that the effects were in fact confined to Wall Street and a few surrounding blocks.”

Gordon Brown, however, defended his comments, saying: “Mr Clinton is forgetting that, in Britain at least, history began in April 1997 when I became Chancellor. Previous events - e.g. socialism - officially didn’t happen.”