(almost) always thinking

A couple of the other owners at the yard where I keep my horse are lawyers and on Friday evening they were talking about how busy their case load suddenly was.  It’s the same for me – some big and lucrative projects seem to have just appeared out of thin air.

But I’m not prepared to herald this as an indication of The Beginning of The End of The Recession.

I’m starting to think we must be in a ‘W’ shaped recession, where we could expect to see a brief economic uplift, swiftly followed by sinking back down before the promised economic recovery finally arrives.

Consumer and even trade confidence might be returning, but business (in particular the manufacturing sector) has cut back so far and so fast that it almost precludes sustained growth and the danger is that if the Powers That Be think the worst is over, they will stop focusing on limiting the impact of recession.  Which would send us back down the slope from V to W…

But who should you believe?

The National Institute of Economic and social research say that the recession is already over

The British Chambers of Commerce say we’re not out of it yet and today’s letter is ‘W’

and

The International Monetary Fund says it will end this year