Over at Comment Central, Alice Fishburn’s highlighted a couple of 2008’s worst predictions. Of course, we’ll have to wait to see how things pan out, but I reckon Alistair Darling’s claim that the economy will start recovering by the third quarter of 2009 could well be a contender for the list. He first deployed it during his Pre-Budget Report statement, but it popped up again during the Chancellor’s appearance before the Treasury Select Committee today. Here’s how the indispensable Politics Home reports it:
That reference to “uncertainty” is Darling’s token attempt to loosen the forecast, but he also makes things trickier for himself by linking a 2009 economic recovery to his “fiscal stimulus” more explicitly than he has done before.Mr Darling said that he expects the economy: “to start to grow in the second half of next year.” He said that this estimate was based on: “the low interest rates, the advantage that will come from low inflation, the fiscal stimulus that I put into the economy in the pre-Budget report”. But he emphasised that: “there is a lot of uncertainty out there” and that events every day affected the government’s assessment
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