View Single Post
Old 26-01-10, 14:51   #1
Mad Tony
Member
 
Mad Tony's Avatar
 
Joined: May 2006
Posts: 61,599
Default UK economy emerges from recession

Quote:
Originally Posted by BBC News
The UK economy has come out of recession, after figures showed it had grown by a weaker-than-expected 0.1% in the last three months of 2009.

The economy had previously contracted for six consecutive quarters - the longest period since quarterly figures were first recorded in 1955.
There have been recent recovery signs - last week, UK unemployment fell for the first time in 18 months.

The UK's had been the last major economy still in recession.
Europe's two biggest economies - Germany and France - came out of recession last summer. Japan and the US also emerged from recession last year.

The weak level of growth took its toll on the value of the pound, which fell against both the dollar and the euro on the money markets.

'Below expectations'

"We can say that Britain has just crossed the line in coming out of recession," said BBC chief economics correspondent Hugh Pym.
"It [the growth figure] was below analysts' expectations. The figure could be moved down, or indeed upwards."

Our correspondent said the move out of recession had been greatly boosted by the government car scrappage scheme.

Joe Grice, from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), said the UK's production and service sectors each grew by 0.1% during the quarter.
The ONS figures also showed that GDP fell by a record 4.8% in 2009.
"The Q4 GDP figures are a major blow to hopes that the UK economy had emerged decisively from recession in Q4," said analyst Jonathan Loynes at Capital Economics.

"No doubt some commentators will claim that the figures are under-estimating the true strength of the recovery and will be revised up in time.
"That is certainly possible. But it won't change the big picture of an economy still operating way below both its pre-recession and trend levels of output.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8479639.stm

Well this is good I guess, but it doesn't really mean much. We've only just caught up with the rest of the western world and unemployment is still pretty high. We are in for a very long and slow recovery and no doubt David Cameron will get the blame for that if he gets elected as PM this year.

I just wonder when (not if) Gordon Brown will start using this to his advantage and if it'll backfire on him. After all, he helped to cause this and it's not like Labour did anything to help the economy.

Last edited by Mad Tony; 26-01-10 at 14:53.
Mad Tony is offline   Reply With Quote