OECD predicts UK will enter recession

[Damien]

Proper link to follow once a story is up:

Originally Posted by Guardian

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has predicted that Britain will fall back into recession next year, and that Germany is already in recession.

In its half-yearly report, the OECD predicted that the UK economy will shrink in the current quarter, and again in the first three months of 2012. It cut its forecasts for UK growth during 2012 as a whole to just 0.5%, from 2% before.

Pressure is on Osborne now, hopefully the £5 billion investment plan will work.

[chris9991]

Lets hope it's not another Japan

[Russ]

If Milliband or any of Labour try to pull the ConDems up on this, it'll only lower my already ground level amount of respect for them.

Labour may not have caused the financial crisis but they were in power when they could have been putting money aside for a rainy day for the country.

[Ignitionnet]

No they did cause some of it when they gave the BoE the mandate to control interest rates based purely on retail inflation rather than asset inflation along with loosening regulation and making it more disjointed.

To be thoroughly depressed read http://www.tullettprebon.com/Documen...Report_007.pdf

the delivery of failure
• The responsibility for putting Britain into a high-debt, low-growth trap lies firmly with the 1997-2010 Labour administration. ‘Team Brown’ bungled the reform of the financial regulatory system, mistook the ensuing property-driven bubble for real growth, irresponsibly ramped up public spending to unaffordable levels, and throughout remained blithely ignorant of its mistakes.

• By pursuing policies based on selective moral absolutism and spurious notions of ‘fairness’, the Labour government created a psychology of individual and collective entitlement which is the biggest single obstacle on the route to economic viability.

Far from recognising the bubble for what it was, Brown proclaimed the abolition of “boom and bust” (together, presumably, with the general economic laws of cyclicality). With the laws of economics conveniently abolished, Brown ramped up public spending by more than 50% in real terms, far outpacing even the bubble growth of the period, let alone the much more modest growth in the tax base.

[Damien]

Originally Posted by Russ

If Milliband or any of Labour try to pull the ConDems up on this, it'll only lower my already ground level amount of respect for them.

Labour may not have caused the financial crisis but they were in power when they could have been putting money aside for a rainy day for the country.

At some point this becomes this government's responsibility. There is only so long you can place the blame on the last administration. Although realistically this would be a recession that hits Europe as well and maybe America, there isn't much the government can do really.

[Alan Fry]

We should scrap the cuts in government spending, launch a development bank that will lend hundreds of billions to businesses, a massive crakdown on tax evation, reclaming evaded taxes, raise taxes for high earners and start major infrastructure projects

[heero_yuy]

Originally Posted by Damien

At some point this becomes this government's responsibility. There is only so long you can place the blame on the last administration. Although realistically this would be a recession that hits Europe as well and maybe America, there isn't much the government can do really.

If our major trading partners are heading for recession I suspect that there's precious little any government can do to stop it. Just try to minimise the fallout. We would however have been in a better position had some of the expendature over the last decade been on infrastructure (and thus one offs) rather than a year on year commitment to bogus public service "jobs"

By contrast Canada's fiscal prudence has set them up well to weather the storm.

Flaherty also pledged that corporate tax cuts, which come into effect Jan. 1, 2012, will go ahead.

[chris9991]

I hope that the private pension money is not under threat and that the Government guarantee to pay the fees to the pensions over the years even if the schemes turn out to be more costly than the Government going alone.

I also hope the obligations get recorded on the nations balance sheet. I don't them to hidden away like the PFI ones

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Damien

At some point this becomes this government's responsibility. There is only so long you can place the blame on the last administration. Although realistically this would be a recession that hits Europe as well and maybe America, there isn't much the government can do really.

The last government continued to blame the Tories when they were well into their second term term and beyond, people still blame Thatcher...........

[Cobbydaler]

I blame MacMillan...

[Hugh]

Originally Posted by Alan Fry

We should scrap the cuts in government spending, launch a development bank that will lend hundreds of billions to businesses, a massive crakdown on tax evation, reclaming evaded taxes, raise taxes for high earners and start major infrastructure projects

And where would we get the hundreds of billions from?

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by Hugh

And where would we get the hundreds of billions from?

a massive crakdown on tax evation, reclaming evaded taxes, raise taxes for high earners, and put the cost of fags up.

[Hugh]

Since the first two are the same thing, you appear to be from the Enron school of accounting....

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by Hugh

Since the first two are the same thing, you appear to be from the Enron school of accounting....

I never was good with figures.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Gary L

I never was good with figures.

Nor were New Labour. http://www.tullettprebon.com/Documen...Report_007.pdf