(More) reasons to be cheerful
14 Jan 10
In the week that the biopic of the late, great Ian Dury hits the big screen, it seems appropriate for the theme of my first blog in 2010 to follow one of Dury’s big hits: “Reasons to be cheerful (Part 3)”
Ian Dury celebrated the great and small pleasures of life while other New Wave bands were telling us there was “no future”. So which of these two attitudes is more appropriate to 2010?
To start with, the snow is melting (for most of us) and the country is returning to some kind of normality. Simply getting into the office will hopefully no longer be an epic.
Also, optimistic signals are coming from a number of quarters:
- According to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), the UK economy grew by 0.3 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2009, meaning that at least technically, the recession is over
- Accountants are now positive about economic recovery, according to YouGov research commissioned by CCH, with as many as 25 per cent expecting the UK to recover completely from the recession in 2010.
- The UK’s chief financial officers – that’s FDs, for the traditionalists - are looking to 2010 in a more confident mood, according to Deloitte, and optimism about the financial prospects for the CFOs’ own businesses has risen to the highest level in more than two years.
- At the other end of the scale, optimism among privately held businesses (PHBs) on their economic outlook for 2010 has dramatically increased over the last year, according to Grant Thornton, with 58 per cent of PHBs expecting revenues to increase in 2010 (the equivalent figure in 2009 was 37 per cent).
Of course, these polls mostly measure expectations, but in economics, confidence (or the lack of it) is often a self-fulfilling prophecy.
To stay true to this cheerful theme, of course, I’ve had to avoid a number of topics, including: bankers’ bonuses, the fear that once the Bank of England stops its quantitative easing programme things could slump back, the converse fear that QE is just creating another asset bubble and of course, uncertainty over the impact of what looks like a very tough round of public spending cuts.
But all that can wait for another time. Meanwhile, I wish you all a happy and successful 2010.