Neil Martin is running out of big enough words.
I’m a bit slow – I didn’t quite pick-up the fact that the financial debacle of 2008 is now called the Great Recession.
The point came home to me when I was listening to Chancellor George Osborne on the Today Programme at the weekend. He used the term Great Recession, pointedly, quite a few times when talking about what we have endured, and are still enduring.
I’ve nothing against the term, and I suppose it sits there quite nicely alongside the Great Depression. Historians, economists and the like need a title for the financial disaster which hit in 2008. Every big event needs a grandiose title – it helps all of us categorise and in a way cope with a seismic event which needs explaining.
And fair enough that the Chancellor and his colleagues in the Cabinet will keep stressing the ‘Great’ before the Recession! No doubt the Coalition spin-doctors are telling their troops that the populace constantly needs reminding that it is the Labour party who are stigmatised with the events of 2008.
But it makes you wonder, if the naysayers are right and the system is far from fixed, what will we call the next crash? The Massive Recession, and then what, the Simply Huge Recession?
But it’s not even a matter of saying that the financial system is either fixed or not fixed.
What we have lost sight of is the fact that the economy has a cycle. It goes up, then it goes down and from there, it goes up again. Boom follows bust, despite politicians’ best intentions. We are on the way back up, then we will reach the top, then we will come down again. It’s the same as day follows night, or England won’t win the World Cup in Brazil – there is an inevitability about it all.
So yes, fair enough, let’s call it the Great Recession, but let’s start thinking about how we’ll label the next one. Because, it’s coming folks – it’s just a matter of time!
