Amazing first sentence from an article by the Times economics correspondent, Grainne Gilmore, today:
Gloom over the economy will deepen today with evidence stacking up that the recovery is losing momentum.
Well, I suppose that's one way of looking at it. I mean, in the last two weeks we've seen reports of an unexpectedly strong rise in employment; huge gains in car production and car sales; a strong rise in retail sales in June; and a 1.1% rise in GDP in the second quarter, almost twice the gain that markets had expected.
But enough of the boring hard facts! Ms Gilmore is basing her gloom on an couple of sentiment surveys, including one by the British Retail Consortium, arguably the UK's leading peddler of junk statistics.
The economy will face plenty of headwinds once we get into 2011, but for the moment things are about as good as they're likely to get. It would be nice if the press would focus on what's actually happening, rather than trying to talk the economy back into recession.
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