Think tank says UK faces highest risk of recession since financial crisisThe UK is facing the highest risk of recession since the financial crisis due to Brexit uncertainty and a global economic slowdown, a new study has warned, CNBC reports.
The ominous assessment of the economic health, published by think tank the Resolution Foundation, suggested urgent plans are needed to mitigate the impact of the next downturn, with many of the Bank of England’s monetary policy cards already played.
The Resolution Foundation’s “recession risk” indicator, which uses government bond yields to assess the threat from a recession, projects that Britain’s recession risk has now reached its highest level since 2007.
Britain experiences technical recessions, in which output contracts for two consecutive quarters, roughly once a decade. However, the combination of global trade and domestic political pressures mean that the avoidance of mass job losses and socio-economic detriment which accompanied the last downturn may not be as attainable.
The last five recessions have produced an economic hit equating to around a £2,500 loss per household in the U.K., and increased unemployment by one million, the report said.
However, it expressed concerns that following the global financial crisis, the Bank of England has used many of the tools in its armoury aimed at curbing future recessions.
During the last recession of 2008, interest rates in the U.K. were gradually cut from 5.75 percent to 0.5 percent, quantitative easing amounted to £375 billion and VAT was cut to 15 percent.
The Resolution Foundation report drew on various economic studies on the economic impact of these measures to determine that without that policy stimulus, the downturn for GDP might have been 12 percent, equating to £8,000 for every U.K. household.
“Ahead of the next – potentially impending – recession, it is clear that U.K. policy makers do not have quite the same room for maneuver as they did ahead of the GFC (global financial crisis),” James Smith, research director at Resolution Foundation wrote in the report.
Source: The Standard
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