Any recovery from the recent downturn will be slow and protracted

The latest forecasts from the IMF suggest global growth will be negative in 2009 with the UK economy expected to be among the worst performers of the developed nations.

Despite recent evidence the economy is bottoming out we believe any recovery from this downturn is likely to be slow and protracted. The issues are being slowly worked through but it will take the passage of time for the imbalances to be corrected. In the UK, we have a situation where the Government, corporate entities and households are all indebted. The Government is planning on spending more in the short term and hopefully this will assist the economy to some degree, while the household and corporate sectors rebuild their overstretched balance sheets. However, this spending c...