City taken by surprise as Bank of England’s figures herald end of recession

Cleaver

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Note the bit "full scale". That suggests that I knew something would be done, but didnt know the full scale.....as no one did. Who predicted rates at 0.5%, £1000 to buy a car and 175bn of QE?

To go back to Julie's great post about 'straight line thinking', what did you think they ('they' being the government and authorties with their fingers in this pie) would do? I wouldn't ever claim to be able to predict specific aspects such as low interest rates, car schemes and QE, but looking in hindsight and in the cold light of day, I guess they are all fairly 'obvious' options to a problematic situation.

As Julie pointed out, if things are happening in any scenario, you put in measures to deal with it. And it seems as if those measures are 'working'. As her other good post pointed out, this isn't a day where everyone suddenly breathes a sigh of relief because everything is rosey again. There's a tiny bit of growth and some other signs that people are regaining confidence and acting on that confidence.

I guess from my real layman's point of view (and because I'm a bit stupid) I kinda reasoned that all developed countries seem to go in to recession for a few years every couple of decades, then come out of it. They've always done this and probably always will. Why would this one be any different? Different set of circumstances and problems of course, but then 'they' just find different solutions.

mewbie_2

Cleaver wrote: »

To go back to Julie's great post...

I agree that at a quick glance julie's posts can seem somewhat informative, but on closer inspection this is not always the case. We have had a few little run ins where I have proved her wrong, and invited a torrent of abuse unwarranted even for this forum. Only a couple of weeks ago I tentatively suggested that the Origami eight fold method would be perfect for her latest attempt to double her money and am quite surprised to find here still able to post on here after the tirade that followed.

No doubt she will attempt to twist my meaning again, but I know what I know, and I sez what I sez (to quote directly from Mr. Buffet)

whathavewedone

Rochdale, what makes you think conservative voters don't want us to come out of recession? Aside from the fact that recessions are miserable for pretty much everyone (and most of us know at least one person who has been strongly affected by it) the tories will end up taking the credit for any improvement. I don't personally believe, however, that the tories will be handed anything like the golden economy labour were handed in 1997 but even if they are, it won't be labour that people will thanking, just as the tories weren't thanked back then.

You may recall that prior to the 1997 election the majority of people thought that the tories were likely to be the best party to handle the economy. At the same time, the majority of people wanted to vote labour. Hence the conservatives lost and they lost badly.

At the moment the majority of people trust the conservatives with the economy AND want to vote conservative. Labour will need to pull a bigger rabbit out of the hat than the country being officially out of recession this year.

As for what David Cameron said, it's absolutely ridiculous to say that the leader of the opposition cannot voice a negative opinion about the economy (and the way that the economy is being handled) for fear of talking down the economy.

Rochdale_Pioneers

bendix wrote: »

Rochdale, could I give you some advice? Read Karl Popper. He will teach you that the best way to progress intellectually is to develop your theory (in your case Labour Good, Tory Bad etc etc) and then actively seek to attack it and find evidence to break it down. If it survives, then the theory becomes stronger. It never becomes the truth, but it gets closer to it.

The intellectually weak, however, come up with a viewpoint and then spend the rest of their lives interested only in 'facts' which support their view.

Which camp do you fit in?

Neither, as I don't think any party are "good" or "bad". They are all a blend of policies of differing merit. On this I clearly see Labour's policy as far superior to the Tories, in the 70s when Labour cocked the economy up and had to call in the IMF it was clearly the other way round.