Any Other Business | 22 August 2009

Deep in the Dordogne, I can’t find a damned thing to be miserable about

Sometimes in this job you feel you’re right in the thick of it, setting agendas, kicking butt, lobbing firecrackers into the national debate. Other times you might as well be some no-mates blogger in the middle of the night. Here I was at the start of August, listing positive economic signals that justified a mood of mild optimism as we set off for our holidays, and declaring that worries about an extended recession should be left for September. And what happens? Did postal disruptions prevent that issue reaching Threadneedle Street? Why else would the Governor of the Bank of England follow it with such a gruesome assessment of Britain’s recovery prospects, wrongfooting us all by adding another £50 billion to his ‘quantitative easing’ programme just when we thought he was about to scrap it. Then ‘über-bear’ Bob Janjuah, a Royal Bank of Scotland analyst with a devoted City following, advises his clients urgently to take profits on recent equity and commodity price rises, because he expects markets to crash in the autumn back to where they were in March, or worse — and sure enough, the FTSE starts wobbling in sympathy. Finally, environment minister Hilary Benn advises us to start developing a taste for genetically modified foods if we don’t want to starve to death in the not too distant future.

Well I’m staying cheerful, even if no one’s listening to me. I’m deep in the Dordogne where life flows as gently as always and the only markets to watch are the ones in the little mediaeval towns where we go daily to buy abundant, unmodified produce for lunch. Here the only economic newsflash has been a bulletin from finance minister Christine Lagarde, announcing that France — relatively unburdened by credit crunch and debt crisis — has returned from recession to growth (as indeed have Germany and Japan), with both consumer spending and export sales looking notably perky.