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I mostly agree with your account of Brown's role in the financial crisis/recession, but on the cyclicality of the markets - to a large extent they are cyclical because there is always a lag in the market's response to price signals. If the price of something goes up, it takes time to build the new production capacity made viable by the higher price - but often, because of this lag, the new capacity additions will overshoot a bit and there will be a temporary surplus which drives prices down. Those low prices stimulate demand at the same time as they dissuade further investment - and so the market tightens and prices rise again.
It's basically like a thermostat - you're always above or below the desired temperature, never actually at it.
h2o
Disagree.
There's no proof that markets are cyclical. They look that way from a distance. Yeah, they go up and down but for that to be a cycle in any scientific way there'd be a degree of predictability.
What was different about this crash, what made it so bad, was the notion that we'd cracked economics, that a crash-proof system had been found. Brown specifically told us he was putting an end to boom and bust. And part of what was going to end it was permanent growth achievable through deregulation. In this he was exactly like Greenspan, he was the smart guy who could. (Remember way back when he became chancellor first and he was 'the thinking woman's crumpet'? When he was this dude who refused to answer questions about his sexuality because it was uncool?) He did at one point have a super-hero aura.
Of course the American market was the more important one and the more influential one even on our economy but Brown was absolutely of the same mood and the FSA was part of the same problem. He let the banks get on with it.
The tories would have done exactly the same thing. I think once or twice Ed Balls said 'We only did what you would've done'. I can understand why not many Labour people joined in. It sounds awful. But I think that's one reason why they've been so incoherent in defending their record.
Why they never pointed out that the US's Keynesian response to the crash has allowed that economy to recover faster than ours and that Gordon Brown (as PM) had just such a plan in mind I don't know. Possibly because he'd ceased to be the thinking woman's crumpet and no one wanted to be associated with him.