Found it - from Observer last Sunday - and before anyone says I realised the leanings of that paper but worth a read anyway
'The crisis that knocked Britain's economy so badly off course two years ago was global in nature. It still is.
That perspective is worth retaining through a week that will be dominated by domestic budgetary concerns. On Wednesday, the coalition government will set out its plans to reduce public spending on a scale not seen in generations.
The inevitable consequence will be a frenzy of political skirmishes over what has been axed and what spared. Labour will complain that the butchery is cruelly excessive; the coalition will insist it is the only remedy for a deficit disease contracted under the last government.
The arguments have hardly changed since the election campaign. Cuts ? for or against ? are the only political game in Westminster. That is natural enough since deficit reduction will have a massive impact on people's lives, through job losses and reduced services.
But the global context that seemed so vital when Gordon Brown was corralling world leaders into emergency summits has faded into the background. What used to be a crisis in world capitalism has been downgraded to a crisis in UK fiscal policy, appalling in its way, but neatly contained within our borders.
That is a dangerous illusion. The banking failures of 2007-08 were not a freak storm. They were the expression of stresses in the global economy that had built up over many years and are far from resolved.
The UK was pivotal in the credit crunch, to the extent that British institutions were deeply enmeshed in a financial system that nearly collapsed. But, at another level, Britain is a junior player in a global drama where the actors that matter most are China and America.
During the boom years, China built a colossal trade surplus, exporting to the US and other western consumers. The flow of cheap goods gave westerners the illusion of low inflation. Interest rates stayed low, stoking the credit bubble. Chinese savings, meanwhile, were recycled through the financial system, generating mountains of capital for investors to play with.
Now that the bubble has burst, China and the US are facing a very different kind of economic relationship, one that is rapidly souring. The consequences matter enormously to countries such as Britain, which are relying on buoyant world trade to carry their economic recovery. The omens are not good.
Beijing wants to continue selling cheap goods, not least because its manufacturing industries employ millions of people. If they lose their jobs, social unrest and political upheaval might follow. To lend its exporters a hand, the Chinese central bank intervenes to keep its currency low.
But the US has had enough of being the world's shopper of last resort. It wants to protect its own workers and start selling into Chinese markets. Washington is getting impatient. Demagogues in Congress talk about the impact of cheap imports on American jobs as an alien scourge. The US retaliation is a round of quantitative easing, effectively pumping the world full of dollars. That is supposed to stimulate domestic demand, but it also makes it harder for China to keep its own currency undervalued. The world's two economic superpowers are playing a game of currency brinkmanship. If not defused, the tension could lead to an all-out trade war, with barriers raised against unwanted goods and capital.
An outbreak of that kind of protectionism would be contagious and disastrous for Britain. An essential part of George Osborne's economic strategy is for the private sector to flourish when the public sector is pruned back. A large portion of that new growth is forecast to come from exports.
But Britain is not the only country looking for an export-led recovery. Consumers in most developed countries are feeling battered by recession. There is a lot of government ambition to sell things abroad and a worrying lack of demand. People aren't shopping like they used to. That is a rather important point for the chancellor to consider as he embarks on deep spending cuts.
The credit crunch was only the first phase of the global economic crisis. When the banks collapsed, they had to be bailed out with taxpayers' money. Then markets started to probe whether states were solvent enough to absorb the shock. So many governments, including Britain's, embraced austerity to signal that they were in control of their budgets.
But collective austerity risks shrinking demand and prolonged stagnation.
The coalition is now poised to take billions out of the economy, all in the hope of unleashing a private sector recovery based on manufacturing and exports. But to whom? The strategy relies on wide-open borders and eager consumers with money in their pockets. That is not how the global economy looks right now.
Both the chancellor and the prime minister are surely aware of this threat, but neither man has tried to bring it into public focus.
The Conservatives have defined their approach to the economy too much in opposition to Gordon Brown. The former prime minister insisted everything was global and found kudos at world economic summits. His successor prefers to keep things national. Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne woo the public with household homilies. Labour maxed out the credit card, failed to mend the roof, left the larder bare.
It is true that Labour overspent and that some painful measures are needed to address the deficit. But there are bigger truths that the coalition is not addressing. Britain's economic troubles are the consequence of a crisis in globalisation. The City of London's function as the hub of international finance made the UK particularly vulnerable. Without a determined effort of global co-ordination, like that brokered by Mr Brown in 2008, the economic bonds that sustained prosperity during the long boom will continue to dissolve.
There is a parochialism about the way Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne talk about the economy and the budget, as if they were shopkeepers doing the books. That might be a political ploy to win public support for cuts. Presumably, it is not ignorance of the issues. Whatever the reason, it is time for the coalition to broaden its economic horizons.'