So, that was it. The worst recession in living memory is, if you believe the latest government think tank reports, now over. The recession that Alistair Darling said would be the worst for 60 years (and he recently revised that estimate upwards to 100 years) has passed with nary a whimper in real terms.
True, if [...]
It’s official, Gross Domestic Product (GDP – the total amount of money we make as a country) in the UK has fallen for the past two quarters, which is the technical definition of a recession. This should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody, but the big question is: where do we go from here?
A [...]
(or “Stop talking us into a recession!”)
In recent months I have read, in newspapers and online forums, and heard, from some genuinely interested people and a few incurable optimists, the proposition that the problems in the financial system are somehow due to ’scare-mongering’ in the press. Depending on your bull/bear persona, it’s easy to agree or disagree with this proposition without actually thinking too much about what it means.
So let’s take a step back and consider the fundamentals. First, the mass media obviously influences public opinion. There can be no doubt about that. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t exist; it would have no political role and no advertisers would be interested in paying to be a part of it. Television and newspapers have finely-honed psychological hooks, and although they’re suffering because of the accessibility of more credible information on the Internet, they know how to drag their readers in with a good, emotional (but seemingly rational) headline and story.
As we know from experience, when every newspaper and television channel is exhorting people to buy into the housing pyramid scam (sorry, market) because ‘house prices only go up’, and using fear and greed to push that message home, it has an effect; first on the psychology of the public and then on the market pricing.
And that’s not just us being our usual gloomy selves – Charles Bean, deputy governor of the Bank of England, reckons that we’re now facing the worst financial crisis in human history. Just think about that for a second, possibly the worst financial crisis in human history and it’s not been caused by a world [...]
The Organisation for Economic Growth and Development this week released a report on the economic outlook for the G7 group of major industrialised nations and, would you believe it, the organisation expects the UK to fall into recession later this year.
The OECD’s crack team of economic ninjas says it expects the UK economy to shrink [...]