UK on the brink of double-dip recession, warns OECD

[Turborama]

Source: The Guardian

Thinktank cuts growth forecast for UK following austerity measures and says unemployment could rise to 9.1% by 2013

Larry Elliott, economics editor | Monday November 28 2011 11.32 GMT

The west's leading economic thinktank has warned that Britain faces sliding into a double-dip recession this winter.

In disappointing news for George Osborne as he puts the finishing touches to Tuesday's autumn statement, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said output would fall in the final three months of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012.

The Paris-based OECD said it expected the UK to grow by 0.5% in 2012 as a whole but the two consecutive quarters of contraction fulfil the technical definition of a recession. In its half-yearly healthcheck on the global economy, the thinktank cut its growth forecasts for all the west's major economies and urged policymakers to take urgent action to prevent the contagion spreading from Europe's sovereign debt crisis.

The OECD said in May that it expected the UK to grow by 1.8% next year, but said on Monday that it was sharply downgrading its forecast because public spending cuts, the squeeze on household incomes and a more difficult climate for exporters had weakened the economy.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/nov/28/uk-double-dip-recession-oecd

[bloomington-lib]

1. If the free market economists want their system to live very much longer

they're going to have to come up with a way to keep the system from crashing over and over again. At some point people will wise up and ask "why exactly is this capitalist system good?"

[T_i_B]

2. All economists.....

...would do well to come up witrh a solution to the ongoing EuroZone crisis. That's a huge major problem facing European countires before you get to "austerity" measures so beloved of the right.

[tpsbmam]

3. I've come to the conclusion that this is the 1% purposely causing a global depression

They won't be terribly hurt by it, but the riffraff will. This would create for them a slave workforce willing to accept almost anything to just get a damn job. Unions? Pfffft. OSHA? Pfffffft. Enforcing environmental constraints? Pfffft. Children banned from the workforce? Pfffffft. (Some of the ReTHUGS have been preparing us for this one.) Education for the masses? Pfffffft.

They want a world where we're all clamoring for the scraps they toss us. They know damn well austerity is the absolute wrong way to go -- they've heard it from TONS of economists of all political stripes. They're not being stupid. They're being their usual conniving, evil selves.


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