What a difference a mere 200 minutes makes.
RED faces all round
What this does illustrate is that there are too many ‘green shoot watchers’ out there who can’t tell asparagus from bindweed. And how stupid it is to make forecasts mere minutes before the facts will be laid bare.
Christina
TELEGRAPH
24.7.09
UK economy close to pulling out of recession, figures expected to show
The British economy came close to pulling out of its worst recession in decades in the second quarter, figures due to be published on Friday are expected to show.
Published: 6.15AM BST 24 Jul 2009
City experts are forecasting the economy's contraction to have slowed to 0.3pc in the quarter to the end of June compared with a 2.4pc slump in the first three months after Christmas.
The figures will underline the degree to which the economy has stabilised after the dramatic freefall in the global economy that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers. It was a view echoed by Charles Bean, the deputy governor of the Bank of England, who on his tour of the UK this month said that the economy may have reached a bottom.
The latest news from the high street for June showed that Britons are still shopping in droves. Indeed, analysts at Capital Economics reckon that consumer spending, particluarly last month, helped make up for the sustained contraction suffered by the beleaguered manufacturing sector.
Today's figures are also expected to show that the economy has so far suffered a peak to trough contraction of 5.2pc, the worst since World War II. Despite the retreat from the brink of another depression, few economists expect a robust recovery with unemployment rising, house prices still falling and the banking system still reliant on state aid.
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2. UK economy contracted more than feared last quarter
The UK economy contracted more than twice as much as predicted over the last three months, fresh figures released on Friday showed.
Published: 9:44AM BST 24 Jul 2009
Unemployment is still rising despite the recession technically easing
Britain's gross domestic product shrank 0.8pc in the three months to the end of June and has now contracted 5.6pc in the past year - the worst recession since modern records began in 1955.
Economists had expected figures from the Office for National Statistics would show a far more significant slowing in the rate of decline to just 0.3pc.
The figures underline the degree to which the economy is still struggling to emerge from the downturn despite the emergency stimulus thrown at it. The news immediately hit sterling on the foreign-exchange markets.
"We’re past the worst, but we’re not heading for a boom," said Alan Clarke, an economist at BNP Paribas.
Despite the retreat from the brink of another depression, few economists expect a robust recovery with unemployment rising, house prices still falling and the banking system still reliant on state aid.
The Bank of England has deployed unprecedented weapons in an effort to stabilise the economy, including printing billions of pounds of new money and cutting interest rates to a record low of 0.5pc.
Andrew Sentance, a member of the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee, said yesterday that "we should see some evidence of positive growth in the second half of the year.
"Tying that down to a particular quarter is difficult. There are negative drags, in particular problems in the banking sector," he said.
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