OECD leading indicators

[ciphergoth]

a tiny, tiny flicker of hope on the global and UK economy. Not that I have the expertise to know how much this means. *crosses fingers*

Comments

[andrewducker]

My own, merely vaguely educated, guess would be that we're seeing the bottoming out of the credit crisis - people no long fear that the banks are going to collapse and this is what's caused the increase in the FTSE and in particular the rise in the share prices of the banks in the last couple of weeks.

However, we're still in a recession and we have amazingly large debts. This is going to take a while to come out of - and this will keep things depressed for 2-10 years (2 years to come out of the worst of it, _at least_ 10 years to actually get the debt back down to a more manageable level).

In addition, the power of the western economies has been shaken, and the imbalances between them and India/China will change dramatically over the next few years, as they correct themselves. I suspect that this crisis/recession will be seen as a tipping point.

Oh, and I expect our inflation to be significantly higher over the next five years than it was over the previous five, which will accelerate this still further.

So, yes, probably over the worst of the worst, but things aren't going to be easy.

[ajva.livejournal.com]

Neither have I!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

Don't unclench your sphincter yet.
While credit may be slightly more available, it's still MUCH less available than a year ago, while businesses which are loss-making are still running down reserves of cash, pre-existing lines of credit, and inventory.
Banks may be more stable, but they're much more stingy.
Retail businesses aren't going to pick up any time soon.
Inflation is likely to go up, as are real tax rates to pay for all the borrowing to prop up the banks (without which we'd all be REALLY poor as the banks seized up and all our deposits were stuck).
We're all going to be worse off than we have become accustomed to for some years yet.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Looks very much like taking good cheer from an improvement in the derivative, or even the second derivative. Which would be premature, IMO: an inflection point - if indeed that is what this is - is not necessarily a minimum. And they are called leading indicators but the others (including the ones people actually care about, like unemployment) don't always follow nicely. As of course you know.

Not that I have the expertise to know how much this means. *crosses fingers*

Indeed. Me neither. And neither do a lot of people who are nevertheless claiming that they do have the expertise. *sigh*

I do know that our banking system is systematically messed up and the underlying problems have not been fixed.

And I still predict (but do not *know*) that a bout of pretty serious inflation is the only way to deal with the debt mountain (private and public - though rapidly accruing to the latter as part of the biggest swindle in history), which will hurt people who don't deserve to be hurt.

[palmer1984.livejournal.com]

AFAICT inflation will help more people than it will help, since so many people are in so much debt and so few people save!