The UK economy: an analysis and some predictions

The UK economy: an analysis and some predictions

The Daily Telegraphy's Economics Editor Edmund Conway offers an analysis of the current position of the UK's economy and some predictions for what lies ahead.

By Edmund Conway
Last Updated: 7:36PM GMT 23 Jan 2009
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There are two possible paths the UK economy could take in the coming years. Neither will be pretty; both involve a recession. But whereas one path sees the UK recover from the current slump within around a year, the other foretells a depression that lasts for many years, effectively lopping a major chunk of wealth off the size of the UK economy. No-one can predict with any degree of accuracy which one is more likely, but the dismal gross domestic product figures from the Office for National Statistics yesterday have, sadly, made the latter outcome that bit more likely.

What is relatively simple is to predict the next year for the economy.

As companies' profits continue to shrink, unemployment will climb higher still. The jobless total, which is just below the 2 million mark, will rise towards 3 million by the end of the year, and will probably edge higher still after that. This will ensure that while the recession seems at this moment to be a relatively abstract term for most Britons, by 2010 it will be a very real social issue.

House prices will continue to fall, with 2009 being similarly gloomy for the property market; as values drop many hundreds of thousands more homeowners will find themselves in negative equity, where the value of their home is worth less than their mortgage. This does not matter for those who retain their jobs, but the rise in redundancies means many simply won't have the luxury of remaining in their home until its price rises back above their mortgage.

The big question, however, concerns 2010.

By then, the Bank of England will most likely have cut interest rates to zero and will be actively pumping cash into the economy. By then, such a move will seem less controversial than it does now, since deflation will be the biggest threat - not inflation. But the threat is that the UK becomes trapped in a deflationary spiral, with prices falling faster and faster, and trapping more families in negative equity. Such spirals can be even more dangerous and intractable than bouts of hyperinflation. That, after all, was what happened in the 1930s; that is the depression trap that the UK faces.
The Bank of England believes that it has the power to prevent such an eventuality. The problem is that no central bank has ever successfully warded off a deflationary depression before. Ask Japan: it is still stuck on a depression that has lasted for longer than a decade.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/4326173/The-UK-economy-an-analysis-and-some-predictions.html