Cronus wrote:
Well yes, of course a recession is coming. We're already in it. You can't - for all intents & purposes - shut down the entire economy for months and not expect a recession of some form.
The consensus is that it'll be deep and fast *avoids dirty joke*. Massive drop followed by rapid recovery as businesses get back to work. Although some sectors - hospitality and certainly aviation and overseas travel in general are likely to be slowest to recover. The difference is this isn't a consequence of some financial/economic cock-up, this is a 'black swan' event. The consequences of 2007 rolled on for over a decade and it could be argued we never fully recovered.
As for 'spin', you know for a fact that if yesterday he had said, "well yes Laura, I expect the deepest recession in 100 years", the headlines and news reports would be huge, damning and would cause nothing but panic, stress and probably contribute to the coming drop, as we saw in 2007 when the media motivated thousands to empty Northern Rock. No politician in the world is going to make a statement like that. What he HAS said is that it's "very likely" we are in a "significant recession", which I think we all know.
The "deep and fast" analogy was at a time when most people believed that there would be a period of lockdown, followed be a quick re-opening of most businesses.
Although this is very early days, many (but, not all) of the countries that have started to allow some movement of people, have already seen cases climbing again and for me, it looks more like we will be "yo-yoing" for a little while and a quick rebound looks far less likely than the optimistic murmurings of 3 months ago.
Although I know what you are saying about "careless talk" having some negative effects, Sunak may have been better placed, starting to prepare people for the inevitable, after all, he knew yesterday (and long before then) that a recession was the biggest certainty in economic history, for the very reason that you mentioned.
Now, it's all about how on earth the wheels of commerce can begin to turn, without killing another 40, 50 or 100,000 UK residents.
It's little wonder that Johnson's road map to recovery only showed the first mile and a half, with everything else blurred out, so as not to disappoint.