The Mood in the City - doom and gloom, blind panic or quiet optimism?
Winter 2009
How much does confidence in the City affect you? In a bull market are you more inclined to trade up and hang the cost? When the job pages slim down are you reluctant to give the boss some 'shoot from the hip' feedback, however much you'd like to? Or maybe City 'tittle tattle' has no bearing on how you run your personal finances.
Here's a snapshot of what leading commentators and economists believe to be the general feeling right now in the crunched Square Mile. Is the worst over or are rumours of a Lidl opening on Lombard Street to be believed?
Answers on a postcard.
Lionel Barber, The Economist
November 13 2009
After a near-death experience, the biggest banks in the West are breathing more easily. Life has been good to the survivors of the global financial crisis, especially those who escaped state ownership; and it will get better in 2010, despite tighter regulation and a blast of much-needed competition. Read more
Norma Cohen, Financial Times
November 27 2009
As our American cousins mark the Thanksgiving holiday, Recovery Watch would like readers to note a few high points of the past week that show we Britons, too, have much to be grateful for. The standout must be the shocking disclosure that at the height of the banking panic last autumn, the Bank of England was frantically pouring cash into two of the UK's largest lenders, HBOS and RBS, both just hours away from running out of it. At the peak, this aid totalled more than £60bn and, on top of other aid, amounted to nearly 15 per cent of gross domestic product.
In the event the banks did not fail, the economy did not melt down and we all lived to fight another day. That is one thing to be grateful for. Read more
Charles Goodhart, Financial Times
November 30 2009
Between the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and March 2009 asset prices in financial markets, world trade, confidence and real output dropped faster than in 1929. Since then there has been an, almost miraculous, recovery in financial markets and confidence, and a stabilisation and incipient recovery in trade and output. Read more
Robert Peston, BBC
December 2 2009
Have we reduced the pain caused by the pricking of the mother of all financial bubbles by creating a new financial bubble? That is increasingly a fear that stalks markets and haunts policymakers. So we may be suffering from a combination of still sluggish growth (or recession if you happen to be British) and bubble, a mixture of stagnation and bubble. Shall we call it a stubble"? Read more
Sean O'Grady, Economics Editor, The Independent
December 2 2009
Worrying signs that economic recovery may prove even more fragile than initially feared - with the real possibility of a "double dip" recession - emerged with the release yesterday of the latest survey of business confidence in the manufacturing industry. Read more
Nils Pratley guardian.co.uk
November 11 2009
Yippee, the economy will soon be growing at 4%, according to the Bank of England's quarterly inflation report. And now the unemployment data is showing signs of improvement.But here's the rider: we simply do not know what happens when quantitative easing is withdrawn. That's next year's obstacle and, even with warmer economic breezes, it still looks formidable. Read more
Tracy Corrigan, Daily Telegraph
November 27 2009
Never again. That is the gut reaction of most people who have lived through - and financed - the bailout of the banking system. According to the Bank of England, state support for British banks, ranging from capital injections to Government guarantees, currently totals more than £1.2 trillion. Not all of that support will be taken up, but even so, it will take years to repair the hole in the UK's finances. Read more
By Roger Bootle, Daily Telegraph
November 22 2009
Sales volumes rose by 0.4pc on the previous month, leaving them 3.4pc higher than a year ago. Whatever happened to the great consumer squeeze? What with house prices apparently rising and the City doing well again, you could be forgiven for thinking that the recession is just a mirage, or something restricted to bits of the economy beyond our ken - or at least beyond our South Ken. But can the pain really be over so soon? Read more
Chris Birks, Madano Partnership (Financial PR specialist)
The only way is up.. ..the view from the Square Mile
Even compared to some very volatile years in the recent past, the UK stockmarket has already had an extraordinary year in 2009.and we are only three quarters of the way through.
Exactly a 12 months ago, the firestorm of the UK and indeed global banking crisis brought the financial system perilously close to the brink of collapse, necessitating the massive bailout and nationalisation programme. The current year started dismally with the FTSE100 Index plunging below 3500 in March. Fast forward six months and the FTSE is 50% higher with the index at over 5200 supported by a wave of optimism and buying from fund managers. Read more
Investment Line: 'It is going to be an outstanding decade for equities'
James Phillipps, Citywire - December 2 2009
There have been plenty of doom merchants talking the market down, but Courtiers CIO Gary Reynolds says the fact that the recovery has shrugged off the Dubai debt crisis shows this rally really has legs. Indeed, he says we are on the cusp of 'an outstanding decade for equities', which will be the very antithesis of the last 10 years. Read more
All stories