Published: Wednesday, 24th June, 2009 6:11pm

Recovery? What recovery?

by Alan Bunce

It seems the rash of stories about how bad the recession is, is giving way to stories about how much the decline is slowing down.

In the latest, a CBI survey says the worst of the retail spending slump may be over. No doubt next, there will be stories about the upturn, followed either by stories about how the recovery was a false alarm or how wonderful the world is becoming.

However, what seems more accurate to me are the words of Harris Cartier commercial litigation partner Brian Levy.

I wanted his thoughts on the recession for an article in Business Review which is out this week.

He noted how the last two recessions were property driven and added that people showed little interest in learning from recent mistakes.

He said: 'They are saying, "if we can put a Band Aid on a haemorrhage, let"s do it".'

By my simple logic, if everyone borrows a lot of money, they are effectively borrowing it from the future because there is only so much money in the world. If quantitative easing is really the answer, why not print endless supplies of money? Then no-one need go to work again - apart from the bloke printing it.

Add to that the fact there seems to be people who have forgotten to have a recession. Certain MPs, Premiership footballers, Sir Fred Goodwin and his successor at Royal Bank of Scotland, Stephen Hester along many more snouts which seem stuck in the trough, will all have to be paid for by the public in some way or other.

Vince Cable has already warned that some top football clubs face big trouble and I wouldn"t bet against a Vince Cable prediction.

But I would bet that tolerance of some of the greedier people in the world, will be severely tested along a very long, hard, bumpy recovery.

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