New cost of living figures show real effect of recession on pay
Things are actually even worse than they seem.
Things are actually even worse than they seem.
Ireland, Europe’s poster child for austerity, has slipped back into recession, and the country’s 2012 GDP has been revised sharply lower from +o.9 per cent to just +0.2 per cent.
The poor will be the hardest hit in the long-term by the economic downturn as a result of the government’s changes to the benefits system, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
Something strange has been happening in stock markets since 2008: they have been going up. Not just up, but absolutely flying. Through the prolonged failed recovery, unemployment, an investment crisis, the Fukushima crisis and the EU debacle, Wall street, still the market all else look to, has doubled in value.
Will a politician have the courage to make the case for measures to deliberately redistribute from rich to poor if only to correct the redistribution that has taken place in the opposite direction as a result of QE?
So much for the recession being made in the Eurozone. The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that net trade is down and the largest fall in exports is to non-EU countries.
Economic output declined by 0.1 per cent in December, January and February, suggesting an economy that continued to flat-line in the first two months of this year, according to the latest data from NIESR.
The chancellor George Osborne is coming under increasing pressure from tory back benchers and the governor of the bank of England to pursue a more right wing agenda.
Real earnings have declined since 2009 and are at the same level as 2002.
With today’s GDP figures confirming this is the longest depression in modern UK history, IPPR’s Spencer Thompson asks why the economy is still creating jobs.