This is the latest IMF growth forecast:
Only Mexico is forecast to join the UK in three years of steadily declining growth, and we're alone in advanced economies.
I know this is a forecast. It could be wrong. I accept that. And the Brexiteers will say that. But their problem is finding evidence to support their claim.
The Office for Budget Responsibility is going to have problems with this forecast and showing anything else. And so will Philip Hammond have problems come the budget.
In fact, if you want to pick a moment when the veneer of Tory unity falls apart then I suspect the budget is it. If Hammond says growth prospects are limited, with impact for his revenue forecast, then I foresee the stresses that have been contained to date will spill over.
And this will not just be amongst the Tories. If the reaction from Hammond is more cuts, and it may be just as considerable Brexit spend is forecast, as it is bound to be, then the impact will spread far beyond the warring tribes in the Tories in Westminster.
There may be trouble ahead.
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It’s stuff like this that gets me so angry…………
For all the hullabaloo about May’s poor conference speech and the Kuenssbergs and Robinsons masturbatory focus on the ‘intrigue’ within politics as though it is separate from the economic misery it creates, this is the stuff that REALLY matters – the damage being done to this country.
I am still reading ‘The Princes of the Yen’ by Richard Werner (how the Bank of Japan created a credit bubble and then stood back and let the economy tank in order to get ‘structural changes’ in the economy ) and the feeling of deja vu is overwhelming.
It’s all been done before. We are just the latest victims. And it’s plain wrong. Again – I’m sick of this phoney rule that we have from the Tories – we need to kick them out.
“…..The Office for Budget Responsibility is going to have problems with this forecast and showing anything else. And so will Philip Hammond have problems come the budget……”
Their respective problems are as nothing compared to the problems WE will collectively experience trying to live within the mess they are making.
I can’t help wondering to what extent the figures they are working from to produce forecasts are truly indicative of a real-world economic situation.
It is, for example widely believed that FOMC and BoE use the Phillips Curve (based originally on observation from a different employment structure and economic consensus to that which currently prevails). It consistently produces bizarre policy ‘initiatives’.
Can I have any rational expectation that IMF (an organisation with political rather than economic objectives) and the OBR which effectively is (only) an audit operation (and we all know where that might lead the conversation) are using stats that are meaningful in relation to what they are investigating and pronouncing upon?
I have my doubts.
“There may be trouble ahead.”
That’s a very tentative prediction, Richard.
I suggest trouble ahead is a given. “Semper in excretum est……it’s only the depth that alters.”
For your prediction to be ‘useful’ your estimate of depth would be required.
I’m going with: At least up to the ocksters, as a provisional estimate.
Anyone fancy running a book on it? Just for fun.
Spain (3.2, 3.1, 2.5) as well as Mexico. And surely Spain counts as “advanced” too, ¿verdad?
But I am sure each has its own private cause of economic woe.
Apologies…..