UK economy in double-dip recession

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: BBC

The UK economy has returned to recession, official figures have shown.

The economy shrank by 0.2% in the first three months of 2012, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. This followed contraction of 0.3% in the last three months of 2011.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17836624

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Preliminary figures, but it was fairly widely expected.

[cstanleytech]

1. Hardly surprising. I would hope it would wake up certain politicians in our own country

however at this point thats wishful thinking as they seem bound and determined to keep their heads right where they are still.........inserted rectally.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. The US hasn't gone for austerity in the way the UK has

It has in several states, but not at federal; and the successful bailout of GM and Chrysler shouldn't be under-estimated.

[sendero]

3. Not yet.

.... we haven't. But it is coming.

[on point]

4. More empirical evidence the supply side nonsense doesn't work

[DCBob]

5. All of Europe is likely to go into recession.

The financial mess in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland is affecting the entire region and could eventually affect the world.

[customerserviceguy]

6. Agreed

That's why we're seeing gasoline prices go back down before Memorial Day, when normal economics says they should be rising. Glad I didn't stick the 401K into equities, and I've postponed my plan to buy a new car, too.

[T_i_B]

7. Agreed, BUT......

The current UK government slavishly follows RW economic dogma, and hasn't got the foggiest idea about anything that might get the economy growing again, only public sector cuts.

And that is not helping the situation.

[fasttense]

8. Double-dip recession, coming to a country near you. n/t

[FarCenter]

9. Hollowed out manufacturing, dwindling North Sea oil, and a discredited financial industry

The UK has nowhere to go but down.

It will be interesting to watch the Scotland independence movement.

[FarCenter]

10. Official: Britain staggers into double-dip recession doom

Programmers, telly producers lose brave battle to save Blighty's economy
..

The ONS added that the "stuttering nature" of economic growth following the last recession in 2009 "means that the economy is weaker relative to its pre-recession peak than at the corresponding stage of the depression in the early 1930s".

Even more chillingly, GDP is in a much sorrier state than where it stood during the recessions of the 1980s and the 1990s, the ONS warned.

One bright note in the gloomy figures was for the transport, storage and communication sector to have recorded an uptick in production to 0.4 per cent during the first quarter of this year, after a 0.5 per cent decrease during Q4 2011.

"Computer programming, consultancy and related activities and motion picture, video and television programme production made the largest contributions to the increase," the ONS said.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/25/another_british_recession/

[starroute]

11. Krugman has some sharp comments on this, of course

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/camerons-remarkable-achievement/

When David Cameron became PM, and announced his austerity plans — buying completely into both the confidence fairy and the invisible bond vigilantes — many were the hosannas, from both sides of the Atlantic. Pundits here urged Obama to “do a Cameron”; Cameron and Osborne were the toast of Very Serious People everywhere.

Now Britain is officially in double-dip recession, and has achieved the remarkable feat of doing worse this time around than it did in the 1930s.

Britain is also unique in having chosen the Big Wrong freely, facing neither pressure from bond markets nor conditions imposed by Berlin and Frankfurt.

[Dragonfli]

12. Has everyone forgotten Keynesian economics? Why do they think

that reducing economic activity via "austerity" will somehow magically increase economic activity?

One doesn't stimulate an economy by cutting it's legs off with a chainsaw.