The Guardian: "Britain's productivity puzzle: when will it return to pre-slump levels?"

"Recession saw productivity collapse as more people have been employed to produce the same level of output"

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"... Since 2008, productivity has collapsed as more people have been employed to produce the same level of output. Output per worker is currently 17% below where it would have been had the pre-recession trend continued, which explains why this has been a lost decade for living standards.

"That, though, is history. The real issue is when will productivity return to its old pre-slump trend? If ever. That, in turn, is related to the reason productivity has been so weak in the first place, a theme explored by the Bank of England in last week's inflation report.

"...Some of these structural changes in the economy predate the recession, so unless skills have atrophied or we have become thicker as a nation, there is good reason to imagine that productivity will eventually pick up."

The Independent:
"Black cloud hanging over Britain’s
impressive economic recovery?
Weak productivity"

Link to web site

The Guardian:
"How peaches and propaganda are helping to shape the new world order"

"Many chroniclers of the 1930s say the decade only really took on its doomed, chaotic character when major countries left the gold standard (Britain first in 1931, Italy last five years later). Today, a breakup of the world system would take a different form: the competitive devaluation of currencies in which large amounts of debt are held by other countries, or the closure of financial markets to certain countries. We are still far from this – but not unimaginably far.

"After the release of this week's GDP figures, the debt dynamics of Europe – above all Italy – once again look ominous. Italy has the eurozone's biggest debts and is the biggest loser from the arrangement whereby Germany profits from everyone else's inefficiency. Without recovery, not only do its debts look unsustainable; it also becomes yet another candidate for imposed austerity and technocratic government.

It is possible that, at some point, there will be a replay of summer 2011, in which a bond market crisis has to be averted by concerted global action, but this time with Italy rather than Greece and Spain needing the bailout. Such action will be all the harder in a world where trade and financial markets have become weapons of diplomatic war, in which anti-globalist parties of the right and left have significantly more support, and where the global order looks much more worn and frayed."