Crack the Crunch with the Crunch Breaker
Economic storm Posts
London still number one in the financial world – really!?
October 14th, 2009
I couldn’t quite believe it.
After the past 2 years, where the blood of bankers has flowed freely through the City of London and Canary Wharf, where the UK has been criticised world-wide for financial irresponsibility during the boom years (along with some of our US cousins), all seems to be rosy once more in London’s financial centre.
It seems incredulous, but the UK has taken the number one spot as the world’s leading financial centre, according to the latest league table from the World Economic Forum (http://www.weforum.org/en/index.htm). So, the reward for collapsed banks, massive debt that will be round the necks of our children (or their kids) for decades is to give the UK the prestigious number one slot.
The UK was number 2 last year behind the US, who have moved to 3rd place. Surprisingly Australia is at 2nd place (which supports other posts I have written on this blog site), with Singapore and Hong Kong behind the US. France and Germany don’t even feature in the top 10, so a slap in the face to Super Sarko and Frau Merkel.
Being irresponsible clearly wins through (for the UK at least…).
But on closer analysis, the UK is not in such great shape (as if we didn’t know). The WEF scored each country on various criteria. Out of the 7 criteria, the UK came 37th out of 55 nations for financial stability, behind Nigeria, Panama and Bangladesh.
Now I’m confused – how did we manage to rank first overall? If the WEF wasn’t an independent organisation, I would have put it down to government spin.
Mmmmm
Barbeque summer …. I hope this isn’t what the recession will do …
August 4th, 2009
They said it was going to a be a BBQ summer. Stock up on sun cream, beers and burgers. It’s going to be a summer to remember.
That was the prediction of the Met Office in April on what to expect this summer – endless sunny days like we had in our childhood. Ice creams and playing on the brach. Hope and all things positive.
Certainly for London, summer ‘happened’ around about June 29th when the temperature hit 29 degrees. Since then it’s been cold, wet and windy. In fact I write this blog as the Met Office issues another severe weather warning – and it’s July 29th!
As your expert meteorologist I hereby forthwith do give you my humble (yet brilliant) prediction for when the rest of our summer is coming. I do predict that we can expect possibly one week of proper sunshine sometime during the second half of August. Perfectly timed for when most of us are nowhere near the UK. And that’s it! Did you blink? You missed it…
So much has been written about ‘green shoots’ and the economy coming out of recession, yet it seems that things are still limping along one year later. Small businesses still can’t get banks to lend to them, mass redundancies are still being planned, and this week Willie Walsh, CEO of British Airways said that at least 20 airlines would be out of business by Christmas. BA are losing over £1m a day and whilst this is good news for consumers as seats are cheaper than ever, a business cannot sustain this for long.
So let’s hope the Met Office got the forecast wrong again and that our summer returns.
Much in the same way that the sunny ‘economical forecasts’ given to us in the Spring may have turned out to be false dawns and we might experience severe autumn and winter storms this year.
Let’s hope not.