It’s bad, but maybe not as bad as we fear
So, we've been told, officially, what we've known for ages, that Britain is in recession.
The news comes at the end of a week in which we've seen yet more banking woes, further job losses and a dismissal of our chances of recovery from US investment guru, Jim Rogers.
Before you jump, consider the following. A good major business hasn't gone down yet. There's been no failure that has caused me to pull up short — all the collapses that dominated the news are predictable. They were in God's waiting room anyway — fewer customers and a tightening of credit is all it took to send them under.
Travel around and some areas of the country seem far less affected than others. And Bernard Lewis, the founder of River Island, says today: "I went into the malls last Saturday and they were busy — not just us. You can go around the shops and think — what recession? There is simply no evidence of it."
In property, the number of would-be buyers registering with estate agents has risen to its highest since 2006. In the US, there are stirrings of housing on the move again.
But before I do a Baroness Vadera and hail the arrival of green shoots (since the minister uttered her words and was ridiculed, the order has gone out across Whitehall to keep quiet), it may prove to be illusory. Certainly, in the South-East, the impact of the shattered City continues to be felt. And there are those who think we're another Iceland in the making. Among them, Rogers.
His view that we're too reliant on North Sea oil is wrong — as Royal Bank of Scotland points out, we've been running an oil deficit for years, well before the last drop from the North Sea expires. It's not a big deal.
Likewise, his claim that we have nothing to sell is also misleading. UK exports, RBS reports again, reached almost 30 per cent of GDP in 2006-07. The City, upon which attention is focused, is not as vital as is commonly supposed.
Given a bust bank can find reasons to be cheerful says it all. Yes, we're in recession but it won't last forever. When it does, we may just emerge stronger and certainly wiser.
I promise I didn't write this with my fingers crossed. There is cause for optimism, there is
