Mike's Minute: Recession or not? It feels like it

I think we can ask the question of how much is enough, given the numbers we have given you of late. Government expenditure is up 596 percent and income i.e tax take, is up 334 percent. As a result of that, the debt is up 482 percent. If all of that isn't enough, what is? The economy this week gets its Q1 read on GDP. In other words, what we did in January, February and March. The importance of it, is it needs to be a positive number. If it isn't a positive number that will mean we are officially in a recession, because the last quarter of last year went backwards by 0.6%. Now, there's a couple of things here; 1) The banks are split. Some say we have gone up a little bit, some say we have gone down a little bit. 2) No matter what they say, most agree that it doesn’t really matter, because even though we might avoid a recession in an official sense, the reality is things are pretty grungy right now. And it feels like a recession whether its officially ticked off as one, or not. 3) For what it's worth, my guess is we are in a recession, because if we went backwards in the last three months of last year then I can't quite see what radically changed after that. Over the summer months, did we do a bunch of stuff we didn’t do leading into Christmas? No. And if that theory holds true, ask yourself the next question - in April, May and now June, have things materially improved? No. So if we have no growth at the start of the year, why would we have growth now? And if you follow that logic, moving into the rest of the year, what changes? Well, maybe that budget money for infrastructure and maybe the immigration numbers lead to more people who spend a bit. But you could mount a pretty solid case that suggests we are in real trouble all year long. That then leads you to look at the budget forecast that has growth of 3.2%. It's a projection that came out of a dart and a board in the Treasury lunch room because no one I know has the slightest idea how they came up with that figure. Anyway, by the time the election rolls around we are in the economic doldrums. And the number one issue, as revealed yet again by the latest Curia poll out on Friday, is the cost of living crisis. And if that isn't it, it’s the economy more generally. So what have the Government got to offer us? Record taxing, record spending, massive debt and possibly a recession. Governments with records like that lose elections.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.