{"id":31850,"date":"2016-01-04T07:24:06","date_gmt":"2016-01-04T07:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=31850"},"modified":"2016-01-04T07:24:06","modified_gmt":"2016-01-04T07:24:06","slug":"welcome-to-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2016\/01\/04\/welcome-to-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It's the first morning back at work. What has 2016 to offer? A bumpy ride, at best.<\/p>\n<p>UK stock markets <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2016\/jan\/03\/the-guardian-view-on-uk-stock-markets-a-long-squeeze\" target=\"_blank\">were down 5% last year<\/a>. Expect the same again: commodity prices are not going to recover.<\/p>\n<p>US markets would, <a href=\"https:\/\/next.ft.com\/content\/b3cb9a98-acb4-11e5-b955-1a1d298b6250?ftcamp=crm\/email\/201614\/nbe\/Analysis\/product\" target=\"_blank\">as the FT points out this morning<\/a>, have been in slump territory last year but for a few tech stocks.<\/p>\n<p>Retailers<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2016\/jan\/03\/retail-chains-enter-season-of-christmas-turkeys\" target=\"_blank\"> had a poor Christmas<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>China and the emerging markets <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2016\/jan\/04\/end-of-chinas-commodity-boom-spells-pain-for-producers-with-no-end-in-sight\" target=\"_blank\">remain in the doldrums<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>UK wages will have their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2016\/jan\/03\/uk-set-worst-wage-growth-since-1920s-labour\" target=\"_blank\">worst decade for almost a century<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>UK investment is falling <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2016\/jan\/04\/british-business-spending-eurozone-fears-lagarde\" target=\"_blank\">because of European uncertainties<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The government will tear itself apart over the EU referendum.<\/p>\n<p>There will, of course, be a lot of cuts in government spending.<\/p>\n<p>OBR forecasts on the deficit will be massively wide of the mark.<\/p>\n<p>And, OK, fuel prices have dropped.<\/p>\n<p>If you can make a pretty picture out of that, well done. I can't.<\/p>\n<p>All that I can hope is that this crisis does not go to waste.<\/p>\n<p>Surely, this time it will have to be different?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s the first morning back at work. What has 2016 to offer? A bumpy ride, at best. UK stock markets were down 5% last year.<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2016\/01\/04\/welcome-to-2016\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31850\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}