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| Link to Evening Standard |
"It is a profoundly depressing thought. Could it be possible that the twenty-somethings now entering the workforce in Britain will become the first generation for a couple of centuries that end up, on average, poorer than their parents?
"... Unless we can continue to innovate, to keep increasing our productivity, our own living standards will stagnate.
"... [Some factors are] cyclical. The really big issue, the one that matters more than anything else, is whether there has been some structural change, some damage to the great engine that has increased wealth incrementally, year after year, since the Industrial Revolution."
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| Link to Evening Standard |
"We need to get set for a new normal"
"The economy has just passed a couple of milestones. Employment is, at last, higher than its previous peak; and retail sales are also at a new high. This week we should get another encouraging signal as third-quarter GDP figures are expected to show resumed growth.
"So how close are we towards being back to normal? My quite unscientific answer is that we are somewhere between a third and half-way back — but, and here’s the twist, the new normal will be utterly different from the old normal.
"... House prices are still a bit above the long-term ratio of four times average earnings, so you could say they are still too high. But in another three or four years’ time, with more or less stable prices and slowly rising money earnings, they could be back to a reasonable relationship. We will, more or less, have recovered from the housing bubble. How the monetary authorities allowed the bubble to occur is another matter."
"One in 10 British firms 'are zombies burdened by debt'" (Link)
"One in ten British firms are now “zombie” companies, walking-dead businesses with unsustainable debts, due to the record low interest rate and banks’ reluctance to write off bad loans."
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