Economic Cycle Alphabet

Sean O’Grady is on good form in the Independent today considering the likely path of an economic recovery.

“Those who think, as I do still, that W stands for “wecovery” go along with the V school to the extent that we think the recovery may be more rapid and stronger than seemed likely a few months ago, but we doubt how sustained it will be. There is a particular refinement of the W, which has the second downward stroke less deep than the first, followers of which we may term the “Skewed W” school. I have also heard of those who think the economy will follow a “reversed square root sign” path (I’ll let you have a moment to figure that one out); a U (slower than a V); an L (pretty pessimistic, that); an ECG monitor (healthy heart); and a bathtub. Like Lego, these can stick together in most combinations, so you can have a VW, or a VL or an LV and so on. Any more?”

I will be printing out some A3 sheets of the UK economic cycle (and those of other countries such as Japan and China) to consider with my A2 group the economic conditions under which different ’ recovery paths’ might pan out

More here