Green shoots or dead cat?

Well that didn’t last long did it?

According to sources at the Bank of England, the recession ended ‘two months ago’. Allegedly, we’re now off the bottom of the downturn and though not out of the mire just yet, economic indicators purport to point to a slow but evidenced rise in economic output.

Well that didn’t last long did it?

According to sources at the Bank of England, the recession ended ‘two months ago’. Allegedly, we’re now off the bottom of the downturn and though not out of the mire just yet, economic indicators purport to point to a slow but evidenced rise in economic output.

So, is it time to break open the bubbly and celebrate?

Definitely not. Well not yet anyway. There have been others who think this could well be a classic dead-cat bounce, but again, the circumstantial evidence could be seen either way, depending on whose stats you believe.

Paul Quigley,
Editorial Director

Best then to be wary and continue with the good company house-keeping and guarded optimism that we’ve all learnt to engender this last year or so.

No one would disagree that its been a pretty precarious one this one. As downturns go, this one seemed to hit like a 747 into the side of the global economic edifice almost out of nowhere. Unlike back in the 70s when unionism and political dogma hounded trade and industry, with tariff barriers and strikes putting constant brakes on growth and free markets. But this one had altogether different characteristics.

Quaintly dubbed a ‘credit crunch‘, a crass euphemism for a toxic securitised asset meltdown with avarice and greed for afters, this one – still going on for many – has knocked the stuffing out of globalised free market economics. As a commentator on Radio 4 stated the other day, we’ve moved from having a market economy to being a market society. And that’s an altogether different barrel of fish.

Quite where we’ll be this time next year is hard to say, but chances are, as the world economy continues to shift its business processes online, much of the positive indicator territory will come from innovation and hard work in e-commerce and all of its related digital asset and content management. That, for one thing is sure, will now never be rolled back. Tim Berners-Lee‘s web-link notions have a lot to answer for. Thank God.