The coalition governments election boom strategy suggests that 2013 may turn out to see stronger economic growth than the 1.3% forecast of December 2009, with the forecast for 2014 of 3.1% remaining the most probable outcome.
HMRC and Company Bankruptcies
During the recession the HMRC had agreed for many small companies to delay payment of taxes, now as the economy recovers it will be going after these small companies, a significant number of which will go bankrupt. The HMRC is chasing approx £10 billion which roughly translates into a potential of 100,000 company bankruptcies, thus adds to some downward pressure on the economy during the next 2 years against the OBRS more optimistic growth forecast.
Why You should Not Pay any Attention to PIMCO on the UK Economy
the PIMCO $1+ trillion dollar bond fund on face value appears to be failing in all directions on the UK economy. A few weeks ago PIMCO's head Bill Gross was calling UK gilts nitroglycerine. Now he has apparently turned bullish on the UK economy and UK debt market, so has gone from imminent collapse to a strong bull in just a few weeks.
It seems obvious that if mega market moving funds of over $1 trillion want to buy a sizeable position in a market then the best thing to do is to talk the market down to accumulate into it, which appears to be what PIMCO has been doing which is reflected in sterling's strong trend, as instead of the Gilt market falling it has actually risen quite strongly since Gross's doom comments. The lesson here is to consider the media stars that do the rounds on the likes of CNBC and Bloomberg as either propagandists that are not going to tell you anything that you will actually profit from, as position's to be accumulated or academic economists trying to sell their latest books.
Stocks and Housing Bull Markets Generate Economic Growth
As is usually the case, the press and academic economists remain permanently fixated on looking through the rear view mirror, writing reams and reams to explain what has already happened. Whilst their response to one of the greatest drivers for economic growth is to state that that the stock market is detached from reality. Yes I said DRIVER, not LEAD INDICATOR which is the consensus view that the stock market rises to discount future economic growth, which is not quite accurate, a rising stock market acts as a strong positive feed back loop that GENERATES economic growth, that GENERATES RISING Corporate Earnings.
This is why the vast majority of analysts that are fixated on valuations and corporate earnings conclude that stocks cannot rise because they are over valued by as much as 40%. When the reality is that the stock market TREND MANIFESTS the economic reality, as I pointed out in Mid March 2009 (Stealth Bull Market Follows Stocks Bear Market Bottom at Dow 6,470) whilst many prominent analysts were stating at the time that stocks could not rise due to the fact that corporate earnings were expected to collapse instead corporate earnings are now materialising to surprise to the upside which is despite the fact that the banks are not lending. I would imagine that the banks are viewing the surge in corporate earnings as a key indicator for increasing lending going forward to finance mergers and acquisitions, something that will NOT appear in analysis of rear view mirror statistics on bank lending.
The bottom line - The stock market as a whole does not FOLLOW or LEAD, it GENERATES economic activity. The trend expectations as of March 2009 remains for a multi-year bull market with the forecast trend road map for 2010 illustrated below -