Friday 24 July 2009

The rapidly shrinking UK economy

The UK economy stopped growing after the first quarter of 2008. Since then it has shrunk in real terms by 5.7 percent.

In the chart above, 100 represents the size of the UK economy back in 2005. This current recession has almost wiped out enough real GDP to bring the economy back to its 2005 level.

Brown's legacy could well be that the UK economy became smaller during his time as PM.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So house prices will go back to the economy of 2005 minus the bubble froth.

We might see year 2000 prices at this rate.

Anonymous said...

The comment on Brown's legacy was unwarranted. You imply a causal relationship which you surely know does not exist. The imbalances were existing before he took his post and he is unfortunate that the unwind happend while he is there.

You could argue that he participated in the follies before he got to the top and he deserves what is dished out now.