Take a look at your local high street. There are probably boarded up shops for rent, and all kinds of gimmicks on offer to try and sell you things in times when you are trying not to spend more money than you have to.
But there have been a few small shoots of green lately. You may not have spotted them unless you were looking for them, but if you read the news then you may be aware of one or two things that have been happening.
Firstly the British pound has been improving by and large for the last couple of weeks or so. Things didn’t look so good when the government was scrapping over who should be leader, and the elections didn’t do us much good either. But hopefully that will right itself soon.
There are other news stories around though if you have been looking out for them. And one of them is to do with the housing market. Apparently it is starting to look better than it has in months, and while we would stop far short of being confident of soaring prices again, it has improved. Some estate agents are boldly declaring that the recession is all but over, in big stickers emblazoned in their windows. That might be a bit much to swallow, but hopefully they are at least thinking in the right direction.
As we mentioned just now, the internet does have a range of news stories that are positive about the recession beginning to recede. This one in particular from Bloomberg – tells us about the housing market, as well as touching on a large number of other pointers that make interesting reading.
So how close are we to the end of the recession in reality?
The danger with stories like this is that people may take them too literally. Some will read this and think that’s virtually it – things are going to be back to normal and back to how they were previously within a few short weeks.
But of course that won’t be the case. It is very likely that even if we are starting to turn a corner, it will be some months before that corner is completed. After the depth of the recession we have had, it could take years before we really get back to good times. Let’s not forget the huge amount of debt this country is now in, and how that will affect us as time goes on.
That is the problem with a recession. It reaches into so many different parts of a country that it takes a long time to rectify the damage, even when the worst is over. Many people will still be left without jobs and that situation doesn’t change overnight. Some will have no interest in looking at their currency converter to see how the exchange rates are looking, because they cannot afford to go elsewhere on holiday – or even go away in this country.
So let’s not get too excited just yet. Watching the exchange rates as they alter is just one small part of keeping abreast of events as they occur. Let’s hope we have turned a corner, but let’s also be prepared for some tough times to come.
I don’t think the recession is anywhere near the end just yet. It’s more like we have simply got used to what is happening. It’s amazing how resilient we all are underneath – I know some people have got it harder than others but we’ll all pull through it in the end.
We will only realise how long the recession actually was when it has ended for sure. Then we’ll know what it was like to live through the whole thing for months on end! For my money I don’t think it will be over until next year.
I would agree with Kate. This recession is nowhere near over. I reckon it could drag on for longer than Kate said as well – I cannot see it all being over by as early as next year. Some people are so desperate for it to be over that they will point to any so called ‘green shoots’ and see those as signs of recovery, but it isn’t as easy as that.
In the end things tend to go in cycles, and just as we will come out of this recession you can bet there is another one waiting to happen in years from now.
We’ve got a long way to go until this recession is over. It could be a year or two yet before things are anything like how they are on a normal day. And in a way I hope things don’t go back to how they were. We were all buying on credit and not worrying about paying the bill. Why would we want to go back to doing that again when it got us into so much trouble? Personally I am going to work at paying off some debt and then I won’t rely so much on my credit cards in the future.
It was strange to go back and read this article again, given the fact that we look more likely than ever to go back into recession again in the UK. I haven’t travelled much across Europe recently but I still suspect we are better off in the UK than many people are in countries across the Eurozone at the moment. Do other people agree with me on this or am I alone in these thoughts?