The Economists and the City Experts get it really wrong this time!

The word on the financial street was that Britain was today going to officially come out of recession. Just to clarify that is the “technical recession” as measured 3 months too late by various Government bodies and not the actual recession that we are all living through. We were going to join France and Germany in reporting growth in the economy.

All of the Business Analysts and Reporters have been banging on about this landmark in the move out of recession. They have been quoting various economists and city commentators, they all seemed very excited and very upbeat.

Ooops! The figures came in at around 9:30am today and guess what......they all got it wrong, again.

In actual fact the economic data shows that we are still very much in recession and consumer spending has not returned. The two most worrying elements of today’s news are firstly the construction industry is still struggling and secondly the demand for services from the consumer market has yet to return.

For the record we were always going to lag behind the likes of Germany and France as the British economy was far more reliant on the financial sector for its economic growth. As the current crisis is very much centred on the collapse of the global financial system it shouldn’t take a genius to work that out.

As this whole thing goes on it is becoming more apparent that our economy is run by IDIOTS! And the journalists that report on it are just as bad. Did nobody think to analyse even the anecdotal evidence?

For example, mortgage approval rates are improving but only slightly and are nowhere near previous levels, credit card spending is down, credit card approval are down, the savings ratio is up, estate agent windows still look bare, shops are closing, the fear of redundancy still hangs over many jobs in Britain, etc.

It is hard to resist the temptation to say, I told you so, so I won’t, I told you so. In more than one previous blog I stated quite clearly that until the end of the first quarter of 2010 any expert that tells the world they know what is happening is talking out of their ear (for want of a much better word).