Hardly a recovery in the UK

SLUSK

UK numbers showed a growth of 0.1% in the fourth quarter compared to the previous quarter.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/gdp0110.pdf

This is contrary to the predictions of economists like Paul Krugman who said Britain's recovery would be stronger due to aggressive monetary policy.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/bouncing-britain/

So Keynesian policies with larger deficits, low interest and and a weak currency does not seem to do much good.

Time Magazine

In March 2009, when the BoE announced quantitative easing, the FTSE100 stood at ~3500. Today, it's ~5250. That's a 50% increase.

Why is this happening? The markets expect an improvement in economic conditions and are pricing this in. Stock prices can double much faster than output can - there's always a lag in the full effects of any policy to come to fruition. Any economics textbook will state this.

Suggesting the FTSE is incorrect in its enthusiasm is to suggest markets could be incorrect... you wouldn't want to suggest that, would you?

SLUSK

Time Magazine wrote: »

In March 2009, when the BoE announced quantitative easing, the FTSE100 stood at ~3500. Today, it's ~5250. That's a 50% increase.

Why is this happening? The markets expect an improvement in economic conditions and are pricing this in. Stock prices can double much faster than output can - there's always a lag in the full effects of any policy to come to fruition. Any economics textbook will state this.

Suggesting the FTSE is incorrect in its enthusiasm is to suggest markets could be incorrect... you wouldn't want to suggest that, would you?

I would suggest much of the "recovery" is inflation. As you well know asset prices increase much faster than general prices for goods and services since you can leverage assets with very large loans.

Sleepy

Purely annecdotatal but the job market for IT contracts is much healthier here in the UK. I can't get a PFO at home but I've turned down a solid offer of a permanenet position and a number of unsolicited contract opportunities in the last month.