Britain faces worst recession in history, Cabinet minister Tessa Jowell admits

[EffBee]

So fed up of this recession rubbish. To be honest Id hardly say its the worst recession in history, I havent seen any huge shanty downs and people living in dirt.

Grrr the media just loves shock tactics!

The effects of this recession haven't really started to bite yet, but please continue to keep your head buried in the sand for the next two years till it is all over

Shanty towns were a feature of the great depression. When I was a lad we had a boom then a recession every five or six years.

 

[EffBee]

And finally....

Think elections - Brown is trying to set up a situation where he will not see his party murdered in the next election, which I believe is either going to be a snap election in February before things get too bad, or by law in about two years time when we will all be exhausted and shell shocked.

In any case, assuming the Tories replace labour after an election (or two) in the next few years they will inherit an absolutely awful mess thanks to Browns current excessive spending.

There's a bit of politics at play here.

 

[Sanguinnus]

how much is the Olympics costing us now?

35p

 

[Cosimo]

35p

It’s more like £10 billion now and £30 billion later.

 

[Spie]

The recession's only going to be made worse by this stupid media hyping, making people be more tight with their cash...

So true. However, 10 years of an ineffective Government more concerned about social engineering than the economy was bound to cause problems one day.

 

[Tunney]

There was a big headline on The Metro a few weeks back about predicted unemployment numbers. To put things into perspective, the worst case scenario from the analysts puts the UK about on par with France's current unemployment rate.

This might spiral into the worst recession ever but I know that my parents have been through far worse than what's predicted at the moment.

 

[brid]

Interesting how the people who dont believe we are on the edge of something MASSIVE are usually the ones who havent lost their jobs yet.

If you take a cold, hard, calculated look at the figures ... its the worst we've had since the last world war.

The british consumer is doing his swan dance before it all goes truly belly up - The last bits of imported chinese plastic tat are being swept off the shelves like nobodys business, all because its easier to bury your head in the sand than it is to sit back and do something about their financial situation.

Theres nothing economically to support any kind of rebound or recovery any time soon - Its time for the debt to be repaid, or defaulted on.

No more easy money.

 

[Haircut]

This is going to be bad because the cause is different to the last few recessions.
The credit, which we have been leaving off far too much recently, is being squeezed so it's not possible for consumers just to spend more money as they don't have it.

Just looking at the housing equity withdrawal figures from the Bank of England suggest this is going to be a big one.
Until last year about 4-5% (IIRC, figures are available from the BoE website) of the total GDP in value was being withdrawn from people's mortgages. This has pretty much now stopped and I think the last figures showed it was going negative.
This alone will have a huge impact on the economy and we've barely touched the surface IMHO.

If you actually look at the figures it's really quite scary.