Better and Indifferent News

The IMF and the OECD seem to have given the UK a thumbs up if only a qualified one. Lagarde said she shivered to think what would have happened to the deficit if the policies adopted by Osborne had not been put in place. The deficit was at 11% of GDP whereas now it is at 8% of GDP. The OECD's Padoan implied in answer to Jeff Randall this evening that the UK is in the top third of EU countries in dealing with its economic woes. Padoan also said that although inflation is currently higher than wage increases at least the gap is reducing and should be eliminated in the next 18 months meaning people will then have more money in their pockets to spend.  It was clear Padoan thinks the UK is on a slow but sure upward trend. One does not often hear such comments and one hopes that Paduan is right. In the meantime the Greek fiasco continues but Tsipras now seems to be toning down his rhetoric by saying that if he wins the election he will talk to the ECB and so on but the view that the Germans will blink first in the standoff between them and the Greeks is spreading. Tsipras says he wants to stay in the euro but that Greece can't repay what has already been lent to it. From a purely economic standpoint Greece should leave the euro but from a political point of view the Germans are keen for them to remain because if the Greeks leave they will lose the truly huge sums of money (billions) they have invested in the euro succeeding. Until someone takes a lead to resolve this mess it can only drag on and the more it drags on the worse it will get whatever the outcome.