Free fall – in a nutshell

My friend the formidable economist, Mark Weisbrot put it most succinctly.

“Since the U.S. economy showed positive growth for the last quarter, some commentators in the business press are saying that we are not necessarily going to have a recession, or that if there is one it will be mild. This is a bit like the proverbial story of the man who jumped out of a window 60 floors up, and then said “so far, so good,” as he passed the 30th floor.”

On a day when Nationwide warned that in the UK “The pace of house price falls accelerated in May as more weak economic news added to the gathering momentum of negative sentiment about the housing market,” his point is a timely warning that while the UK lags the US, nevertheless the levels of household and corporate indebtedness and the scale of our housing bubble means we still have far to fall.