LONDON (AP) — The Bank of England warned Thursday that the British economy could suffer its deepest annual contraction in more than three centuries as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, before roaring back next year.
That’s exactly the kind of challenge Dear Leader loves.
He’ll go out of his way to have our continent suffer the worst crash since Columbus stepped ashore…
“We expect the recovery of the economy to happen over time, although much more rapidly than the pullback from the global financial crisis,” said Governor Andrew Bailey.
It’s good to want things.
So they’re all thinking the British economy comes roaring back in 2021, which happens to be (at least at this point) the first year Brexit is fully implemented. If there’s a hedge fund set up on this prediction I’d like to get in on that, I could use a safe investment these days.
I had to look it up.
War and the weather: what caused the huge economic slump of 1706?
The country was very different then. The development of a new merchant class was under way, symbolised by the founding of the Lloyds of London insurance market 20 years earlier and the Bank of England eight years after that. But the country was still primarily agricultural – many of the innovations that drove the Industrial Revolution were still decades away. Wars were expensive and strained economies. So while 1706 saw victory over the French at the battle of Ramillies, it also saw a 15% plunge in national output – an even more severe contraction than the 14% the Bank of England is expecting this year.
The economy was at the mercy of the weather. Three years after the slump of 1706, the country was in trouble again due to the Great Frost of 1709. It helped trigger a 14% drop in activity – a much more severe setback than the pricking of the South Sea Bubble in 1720.
Three centuries ago the success or failure of the harvest had a profound effect on the rate of growth. It was only the movement of population from the countryside to the cities and the development of a modern industrial society that made growth less sensitive to meteorological events.
Well, Mother Nature just delivered a big fat gift to BoJo and the Brexiteers.
The negative economic effects of Brexit will now all be blamed on COVID-19… BoJo will be “rehabilitated.”