Recession Tracker

If like me you like charts and graphs to help you understand what is happening then the BBC Website’s new Recession Tracker pages will be of interest. Constant economic data can be confusing to follow unless you can understand the historical context and these charts help to do exactly that.

The GDP, inflation and interest rate charts are most interesting to me as they illustrate how the economy is falling off a cliff at the moment. I also suspect that house prices have a long way still to fall before they bottom out.

Whatever your view of Government policy the prospects at the moment are dire and very many people are going to lose their jobs and homes before this is over. Added to that, we are going to be saddled with a huge debt burden for many, many years to come. It would be interesting if the BBC added a chart for the UK national debt. There is some information here and here but I would like to see a long term table published.

UPDATE: The Guardian has a very interesting piece about the causes and predictability of the current UK recession.