Debate >Can a passion turned into a business end up being a chore?
From the editor >My first Director of the Year Awards Final in September was a celebration of your dreams
Iqbal Wahhab >Are cash offers too good to be true?
Duncan Cheatle >How to get Britain enterprising again
MOST VIEWED STORIES
• Sir Terry Leahy
• 10 original thinkers
• Military in the boardroom
• 20 to watch in 2011
Now that some of the dust thrown up by the general election has settled, we are it seems, at a crossroads. Things are either about to get a little bit better, like some watered-down version of 1997, or things are about to get a whole lot worse. The dreaded double-dip recession hangs over us. The stubborn refusal of inflation to drop is both a sign of more activity in the economy and a dangerous indicator of trouble ahead.
Despite the arrival of what every government minister is desperate to emphasise is a “new politics”, all the problems we faced before the election are still with us. The arrival this week in the UK of eminent economist Nouriel Roubini on a book-plugging tour highlighted just how much uncertainty there is, even among economists. Roubini’s stock rose as a result of accurately predicting the scale and timing of the financial crash. And his news this week was not positive. He has increased his estimate of the likelihood of a double-dip recession from 20 per cent to 40 per cent. More depressingly, he claims that rather than being at the start of a recovery, we are only part way through the crisis. His major concern remains the Eurozone and a lack of confidence in the single currency.
This echoes the words of sometime Director contributor and head of Strategic Insights International, Dick Stewart. Stewart predicted in a Director column last year that as a result of this recession, “we will not witness normality at the consumer level for up to 10 years”. If merchants of doom such as Roubini and Stewart are right, there is a lot more pain around the corner.
The Lib-Con coalition has so far been all compromise and co-operative politics. But how long will this love-in last once things really start to get tough? Whatever the odds of a double-dip recession, the chances of old political hostilities surfacing pretty soon are sky high and rising with every new piece of bad economic news that emerges. Will we look back and laugh at the memory of the much heralded, but ultimately failed idea of a new politics, or will the apparent desire for change have a lasting impact? I’d suggest the answer is as much in the hands of economists as it is politicians. And that’s really worrying.