“This is good news,” said the Governor of the Bank England about the decision to raise interest rates for the first time in a decade. From 0.25 to 0.5 percent. Doubled but still to no more than a whisker. So what will that mean for the millions of us with mortgages and credit card debt?
Today’s GDP numbers are not the highest under George Osborne’s chancellorship. But they offer the possibility that confidence and investment will trigger a virtuous spiral in the Uk economy.
Gary Gibbon
The government will be trumpeting new money for infrastructure projects, but there’s no disguising the bad news coming down the track.
Gary Gibbon
Today’s GDP figures prompted no tickertape celebrations at the ONS today – in fact, they suggest the country may do nothing more than bump along the bottom for some time.
Today’s GDP figures will have prompted relief at the Treasury that there is no new recession. But longer term, the picture for the UK economy is unchanged.
In other words, taking into account, alternate upswings and downswings, the UK has not grown since October 2010, also the month of the Spending Review. That’s right, ZERO growth in 5 quarters, 15 months, for which the Coalition’s original deficit reduction plan had pencilled in three per cent.
Gary Gibbon
Surrounded by death masks and shrouds, the IFS is giving its economic forecasts on the bowels of the British Museum. They are marginally but significantly gloomier than the OBR. blogs Political Editor Gary Gibbon.
“They are clearly disappointing figures but the statisticians tell us that the weather had a huge effect – we had the coldest December for 100 years, businesses were closed, people couldn’t get to work… So we’re not going to be blown off course by the bad weather.”
An incredible, unexpected economic surprise. And for once, a positive one, as GDP growth in the second quarter obliterates all expectations, writes Economics Editor Faisal Islam.
Jon Snow
News this morning that Mercedes Benz is to launch an aggressive sales drive in India to ‘capture the luxury sports car’ end of the automobile market.
Britain has squeaked out of recession but the figures are consistent with the dreaded double-dip, blogs Faisal Islam.
If there are green shoots appearing in the economy, then the slugs have started to munch them. A shock fall of 2.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2009 is the worst quarter-on-quarter fall since 1958. The annual fall in the economy of -4.9 per cent of GDP is the largest since records began…