Stroke or cancer . <| sep |> That wasn ' t the question he said we shouldn ' t have a recession that lasts 10 years . Except the UK has already been in recession for 27 years . A recession is shrinkage in GDP . If you take off all the private debt and government debt then it clearly is a recession . The Govt SHOULD be running a small deficit it ' s sound economic policy . Running a surplus is actually BAD for the economy . And what is the UK government doing ? It ' s running a gigantic deficit every year and will run such a deficit into perpetuity . ? Macroeconomics is extremely far away from a household budget . The rules are almost 100 % differentNot really the only difference is that you can cheat . Cheat too often and participants pick up their ball and walk away . Many people wrongly think they can cheat indefinitely .