Posts Tagged ‘growth figures’

Snail-pace growth? They have snow in Europe too. What they don’t have is Osborne.

26/07/2011, 03:00:34 PM

by Rachel Reeves

Throughout the phone hacking scandal, the chancellor has tried to keep his role in the “regrettable” appointment of Andy Coulson as the PM’s director of communications out of the spotlight. Despite being the one who allegedly recommended Coulson’s appointment, Osborne has done his best to bat away any responsibility for his role in that crisis.

Today, as the latest data show that GDP grew by just 0.2% in the second quarter of 2011, the chancellor is no doubt wishing he could be as slippery in evading responsibility for the staggeringly anaemic “recovery” that is now entrenched in the UK.

Growth of 0.2% in the second quarter of this year is a slow-down from growth of 0.5% in the first quarter, which in itself was only just enough to counter the contraction in the economy of 0.5% in the last quarter of 2010. Compare this to Q2 for last year, when the economy, in its third quarter of economic recovery, was growing at 1.1%, thanks to the decisive action from a Labour government that knew a strong recovery was critical to getting the country back on its feet and the deficit down.

Now, as a result of the too far, too fast approach of the government since May 2010, growth has continued to falter, a year and a half after the economy moved into recovery, and the economy is flat-lining. Three years after the peak of GDP before the recession started, output has not managed to recover by even half of the 6.4% that it fell since the first quarter of 2008. This recovery is turning out to be anaemic, as well as historically and internationally weak.

Today’s GDP figure of 0.2% is far below what the treasury needs if the economy is to meet its forecast for growth of 1.7% for this year. And let’s remember, that forecast has already been downgraded three times – the independent office of budget responsibility was forecasting growth of 2.3% for 2011 just a year ago.

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Tuesday News Review

26/07/2011, 06:36:38 AM

Pressure piles on for Plan B

The Government could come under pressure later today to produce a ‘plan B’ for the economy if official figures show no sign of recovery.  City forecasts of 0.5% growth for the last three months have been trimmed back by most economists to around 0.1% or 0.2%, and some have even predicted the Office for National Statistics figures could show the economy contracting. Prime Minister David Cameron has insisted there is no room for fiscal stimulus through tax cuts or spending increases, and the only solution is to “get on top of your debt”. Labour has been calling for a economic plan B, saying the Government’s policy of tax rises and spending cuts to erase the national debt cuts “too far and too fast”. They point to earlier figures showing a decline of 0.5% in the final quarter of 2010 and growth of 0.5% in the first three months of 2011 as proof of the coalition’s ineffective grasp on the economy. – Sky News

David Cameron yesterday ruled out tax cuts or spending increases to kick-start Britain’s economy as ministers braced themselves for figures showing growth has ground to a halt. Official statistics to be released today are expected to show that economic growth fell to about 0.2 per cent in the second quarter of this year. Last night it emerged that the top civil servant at 10 Downing Street has raised concerns with the Treasury about George Osborne’s failure to kick-start growth. Jeremy Heywood, permanent secretary at No10, met senior officials in the Treasury and the Department of Business to order urgent action to tackle the problem. Confidential Whitehall documents are reported to have found that the Chancellor’s ‘growth agenda’ is failing to meet key targets. – Daily Mail

An unrepentant David Cameron prepared consumers and the markets for publication on Tuesday of gruesome growth figures by admitting Britain’s “path back to growth will be a difficult one”, but insisting no shortcut lay in either a fiscal or monetary stimulus. The chancellor, George Osborne, also set out his defence ahead of an expected political battering by claiming he had “turned Britain into a safe harbour in a storm” by focusing so rigidly on deficit reduction. He admitted: “There are risks to current and future growth.” The figures are expected to show Britain’s economy has flatlined for almost a year, contrasting with strong growth in Germany and, to a lesser extent, France. Most economists believe the economy ground to a halt in the three months to the end of June after a big slowdown in the manufacturing sector, which has been instrumental in preventing the economy sinking back into recession over the last 18 months. – the Guardian

EDL links probed

Police are trying to track down two Brits who agreed to fight a global anti-Muslim terror crusade with mass murderer Breivik. Before slaughtering 76 and wounding 97 in his sickening spree, Breivik, 32, posted a 1518-page terror plan on the internet. The Norwegian killer claimed he re-founded a fanatical group called Knights Templar Europe with “an English ­protestant” and “an English Christian atheist” in April 2002. The three held two ­meetings in London with five members from France, Germany, Holland, Greece and Russia – who Scotland Yard is trying to identify. – Daily Mirror

As further details emerged of the connections between Anders Behring Breivik and the English Defence League (EDL), the group’s founder warned last night that a similar attack could take place in Britain. The anti-fascist group Searchlight is preparing to release further information today about the killer’s links with the EDL. The EDL was the organisation mentioned most often by Breivik in the 1,500-page personal “manifesto” he posted online before embarking on his killing spree. EDL organiser Daryl Hobson wrote in an online posting: “He had about 150 EDL on his list … bar one or two doubt the rest of us ever met him, altho [sic] he did come over for one of our demo [sic] in 2010 … but what he did was wrong. RIP to all who died as a result of his actions.” However, a senior member said he understood Breivik had met EDL leaders when he attended the demonstration in March 2010, and described him as “very affable”. – the Independent

Boy George regrets recommending Coulson

George Osborne has expressed his regret for recommending Andy Coulson as the Tory party’s director of communications, as an opinion poll shows most people believe Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corp is not a fit and proper company to hold a broadcasting licence. Osborne said : “Of course, knowing what we know now, we regret the decision and I suspect Andy Coulson would not have taken the job knowing what he knows now. But we did not have 20/20 hindsight when we made that decision.” In a further development, lawyers Harbottle and Lewis have responded to a letter from the chair of the home affairs committee, Keith Vaz MP, setting out their inability to disclose information and naming the lawyer who originally advised News International. Harbottle and Lewis explained their previous unwillingness to disclose contents of advice they gave to News International on the scale of any illegal activity at the paper. – the Guardian

Health tsar launches scathing attack on reforms

One of the most senior doctors in the Department of Health today launches a scathing attack on NHS reforms. Sir Roger Boyle, who retired as the Government’s National Director of Heart Disease at the weekend, accuses the Health Secretary of squandering past gains in treatment because of his obsession with opening up the NHS to private contractors, at the expense of patients. Sir Roger told The Independent: “The allegiances [of the private companies] will be to their shareholders, not to the users of the services. If the market was going to work, the Americans would have cracked it.” Mr Lansley’s plans are “the ideas of one man acting without an electoral mandate”, Sir Roger added. Sir Roger says Mr Lansley had never bothered to visit him until a fortnight ago, despite his success in halving heart-disease death rates and slashing waiting times in the past decade, with minimal involvement by the private sector. – the Independent

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Today’s growth figures vindicate Labour’s economic stimulus

22/03/2011, 07:00:53 PM

Borrowing figures published today: £123.5bn borrowed April to February 2010-11 versus £136.6bn April to February 2009-10.

As we head into tomorrow’s budget, there is clear evidence of the effect of growth on reducing borrowing. Last year, predictions were ratcheted higher on growth, and that on borrowing ratcheted lower as we went through the year. The supply side of the economy in particular surprised, with the result that the highest quarterly growth this century in Q2 2010 and the highest half year growth of the past 10 years allowed the supply side to respond and generate tax receipts that will grow over the financial year by 7.7%.

This has meant that the primary budget deficit has been slashed by a massive 33%.  From last year’s 9.1% of GDP to 6.2% GDP, the growth in the economy has closed the gap in the deficit, supported by the government’s focus on growth-supportive spending. Getting the primary deficit down is the first step to paying off the deficit. The reason the budget deficit itself has not fallen by the same amount is that the interest on the government’s inflation-linked debt has risen considerably, because the Bank of England has failed to keep inflation under control.

As we head into a period of retrenchment and possibly another recession as a result of the cuts, it is instructive to look at the effects of the stimulus from research published by the OBR’s counterpart in the US, the Congressional budget office.  It has published estimates of how the stimulus package has created growth in the USA:

Full time equivalent is a better measure of maintenance of living standards – estimating both the maintenance of jobs together with the maintenance of full time employment that would have become part time. Clearly, the stimulus kept things going both over in the US and here in the UK. The rise in tax receipts is probably the best evidence we have for how much UK productive capacity the stimulus kept alive.

Alas, as we look at where the current government is cutting taxes in their neo-Ricardian view on growth over the rest of the parliament, it’s useful to see what the CBO estimates are of the growth multipliers on different policy effects:

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