Merryn Somerset Webb

It's waiting till things actually happen.

It's not predictive.

It's reactive to reality.

And then I wanted to talk very briefly about the UK and that we've been very positive on the UK stock market, but very negative on the UK economy.

And I remain pretty negative on the UK economy, in fact, very negative on the UK economy.

But there have been some very slightly positive things happening, right?

Mildly stronger than expected GDP growth in February, although we only half care about that because that was February before the war.

slight fall in UK unemployment that, again, wasn't 100% expected, although you could argue that that's simply to do with people just going, well, I give up.

I give up.

I'm never going to get a job, so I give up.

And there's also a very interesting conversation to be had around that, whether that's to do with effectively the UK being on the edge of a recession or whether it's to do with AI.

I suspect the former, but I know a lot of other people think the other.

And the final thing that has happened recently out this week is there's some news that the UK budget deficit is slightly lower than you might have expected at a three year low.

And again, that sounds good, but it's worth remembering that we still do have a whopping great deficit and the debt is still building.

And that that fall in borrowing is presumably connected to the sharp rise in taxes, which may still have a laugher reaction over the next few years.

When you put up taxes initially, you normally get a revenue bounce.

But then people adjust their behavior and that revenue bounce mildly disappears.

Anyway, nonetheless, if you wanted to, you could have a go at dragging some sparkle out of these three things.

Yeah, I mean, this is, I was going to say people hate inflation, but one thing that's really, really difficult is general inflation combined with falling house prices.

That's very hard for a lot of Brits.