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**Hugh** · 05-01-2022, 16:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

The problem with these forecasts, as I have said before, is that they emphasise the debit side and are unable to calculate precisely the credit side (as it is the future, and dependent on business decisions).

This is why they are so pessimistic. You can calculate what you have lost, but not what can be gained through new opportunities. Until you know what the private sector plans, that is.

If you actually read the article, rather than just nay-saying it because it doesn’t 100% support your "opportunities" mantra, you would have seen it is not all gloom and doom (there was some…).

Quote:

Despite the prevailing pessimism over growth, inflation and living standards, several respondents were at pains to point out that it would not be “all doom and gloom” in the year ahead.

They saw scope for a long-awaited rebound in business investment, prompted by labour scarcity, pandemic-induced digitalisation and the need to adopt green technology. These could “nudge businesses into making the types of investment necessary to minimise the dependence on lower productivity jobs”, according to Nina Skero, chief executive of the consultancy Cebr, although she and others stressed that real progress on productivity would take years, and need a much bigger push from the government.

A year from now, however, the state of the UK economy is likely to depend less on what has happened to inflation or investment than on the course the pandemic has taken. As Andrew Hilton, director at the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation, pointed out, a drop in real wages weighed on consumers less than “the gloom provoked by fear of incessant lockdowns”.

“Let’s hope for a post-pandemic boom — finally. It’s the phenomenon most likely to see 2022 end on an optimistic note,” said Diane Coyle, professor of public policy at Cambridge university.

Kitty Ussher, chief economist at the Institute of Directors, also forecast better times ahead. “Ours is an economy that wants to grow,” she said. “For as long as people believe that the worst of the pandemic is behind us, strong demand will keep the fundamentals moving in the right direction.”