What derailed the UK recovery?
Here's a horrible chart: It comes from ONS's Economic Review for July 2013. There are a couple of key things that this shows. The first is systematic underestimation of the damage to the UK's economy. The 2008/9 recession was deeper than previously estimated and output remains lower. But the second is to my mind more interesting. The 2008/9 recession was originally thought to be similar to the 1979 recession. We now know it was quite a bit deeper and lasted longer. But the shape of the curve was actually more like the 1990 recession, which unlike the 1979 recession involved a property market crash. Indeed the two lines parallel each other nicely - even with the revision - until the 10th quarter after the crisis. Then it all went wrong: even though the second dip shown on the original line has now turned into simply a flattening of the curve, the economy stopped recovering then and there has been little growth since. It is all too easy to blame this on the Coaliti...