Bill Gross: The cleanest dirty shirt

Bond guru Bill Gross has admitted to having to rethink his attitudes on austerity and government debt.

Bill Gross, co-founder of Pimco and manager of its $289bn Total Return bond fund, warned in early 2010 that gilts were "resting on a bed of nitroglycerine". High and fast-rising debt made Britain vulnerable to a credit-ratings downgrade, the thinking at Pimco went. His pronouncement fed the clamour for austerity to placate bond investors.

But now Gross has changed his tune. "The UK and almost all of Europe have erred in terms of believing that... fiscal austerity, in the short term, is the way to produce real growth," he now says. "It is not. You've got to spend money." Bond markets want growth, but many countries are tightening their belts too fast.

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