04_05 editors
17/10/08
13:38
Page 3
EDITOR’S LETTER
www.ldpbusiness.co.uk
LDP
BUSINESS EDITOR
Bill Gleeson billgleeson@dailypost.co.uk DEPUTY BUSINESS EDITOR
Tony McDonough tonymcdonough@dailypost.co.uk
BUSINESS FEATURES EDITOR
Barry Turnbull barry.turnbull@liverpool.com WRITERS
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Alex Turner alex.turner@liverpool.com SENIOR ART EDITOR
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WHERE do we go from here? The road ahead has suddenly become steep. Progress is going to be slow. After 16-years of unbroken growth, we are undoubtedly in a period of recession, though the QED proof that the country’s economy has met the technical definition of recession, namely two consecutive quarters of falling economic output, is still three months away.
may find themselves in a position to win greater market share. For example, in the airline industry, those with strong balance sheets, including plenty of cash, can move into new markets as weaker competitors fail or need rescuing. The same will be true in virtually every nook and cranny of economic life. Looking beyond the recession, say to two or three years time, the economy will pick up
Efforts will need to be doubled and every opportunity to do business will need to be taken
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There is nowhere to hide from the facts and figures, the most telling and worrying of which is that unemployment is rising sharply, including in our region. Locally, the opening of Liverpool One may have acted as padding that has softened the impact of the economy’s bumpy landing, but it’s still going to be a bruising experience. Efforts will need to be doubled and every opportunity to do business will need to be taken. Costs will have to be kept under tight control and the more ambitious expansion plans will have to be put on hold. That said, there are some businesses that will come out of the downturn stronger than they went into it. Firms that had foreseen the rainy days and prudently stored up reserves
again. Britain, hopefully, will be well placed to take advantage of the upturn when it comes. The principal cause of hope is that the country is today a much more enterprising place than in previous times. Now that the banking sector has been cured of its ills, the risk to our future prosperity comes from government, particularly the state of the nation’s finances. Tax rises or public spending cuts would exacerbate the woes, both deepening and prolonging the downturn. And yet without them, we face the likelihood over the mid to long term of a prolonged period of higher inflation, which would be the worst of all outcomes.
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