Sir Mervyn King's chirpy new year message: 'There's no reason to despair'
Sir Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, must have made a new year’s resolution to be less gloomy. “There is no reason to despair… All crises come to an end,” he told an audience in Brighton...
View ArticleCould panic buying mean we avoid technical recession?
Here's a cutesy little thought for you: could panic buying mean the UK avoids the two-quarters "technical" recession forecast by the OECD? (I know, I know. There's nothing truly "technical" about a...
View ArticleIt's almost time to start talking about green shoots
So much for the dreaded double dip. “I think we can finally put to bed fears that the UK economy fell into recession in the first quarter,” Jeremy Cook of World First said after the final instalment of...
View ArticleBritain back in recession?
The likelihood that Britain has slipped into double-dip recession for the first time since the mid-1970s has just increased sharply. Chris Crowe from Barclays Capital said the construction data for the...
View ArticleGeorge Osborne's growth plan has self-evidently failed
George Osborne will be wincing this morning. Applauded internationally for his austerity programme, at home he's facing brickbats. Forget the pasties and the Granny Tax, though: Britain has...
View ArticleSlow growth means that the Government risks U-turning on Plan A at precisely...
With the announcement yesterday of a second quarter in a row of contraction in the economy (widely taken as defining a "recession"), and now four quarters in the past six having negative growth, it is...
View ArticleDouble dip recession: how much risk can investors take?
Double dip recession in Britain with fears of worse to come from euroland sent shocks through the stock market this week. Investors received another brutal reminder that the pursuit of higher rewards...
View ArticleFears of double-dip recession and new age of austerity seen in the...
Fears of a double-dip recession tipping Britain into a new age of austerity need to be seen in the perspective of the Diamond Jubilee, which gives good reasons to be cheerful about how most of us are...
View ArticleWeimar solution beckons as manufacturing crashes in US Fifth District?
As Britain tanks by 0.7pc in the second quarter (much worse than Spain at 0.4pc), it is worth keeping a close eye on the very ominous turn of events in the US. The Richmond Fed's twin indices of...
View ArticleMultiplying Europe's fiscal suicide (technical)
The entire EU austerity plan is based on a false premise. This disastrous error is now clear beyond any reasonable doubt. The Teuto-Calvinists believe – or profess to believe, since much of their dogma...
View ArticleEurozone crisis: today’s dismal growth figures hide future tensions between...
The euro has started the year on a relatively positive note. But today saw a whole raft of negative stats and abysmal growth figures coming out of the eurozone. This was a reminder of the bloc’s...
View ArticleIs Cyprus turning into a zombie economy?
One of the biggest mistakes so far in the eurozone crisis was to not properly write down Greece’s debt. The country is therefore stuck in a downward spiral: high levels of debt require more cuts,...
View ArticleToday's GDP figures could, in time, be seen as the start of the real recovery
Britain is growing again. Reduced to bare essentials, that’s all that needs to be taken away from today’s first quarter GDP figures. Cassandras will point out that the economy is still 2.7pc smaller...
View ArticleNever mind the triple-dip recession, the double dip may have been an illusion...
In the event, Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, was deprived by the latest GDP figures of the triumph of a triple-dip recession, but hey, there's always the fact of the double dip to console himself...
View ArticleHere’s the really worrying news for Portugal: the distance to Germany is...
So here we go again. Portugal’s coalition government is basically falling apart as we speak. Paulo Portas, leader of the junior coalition partner, the People’s Party, has resigned, with more of his...
View ArticleThe economy's slow but steady growth is terrible news for the doom-mongers
Today's revised estimate of second-quarter growth, up from 0.6pc to 0.7pc, is terrible news. For the doom-mongers with their warnings that the recovery is being built on another consumer debt bubble,...
View ArticleNo global recovery yet
The world economy is still becalmed. World trade volume fell 0.8pc in August. The next cycle of growth has not yet reached "escape velocity". We continue to be in a contained global depression,...
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