The preliminary figures on UK gross domestic product for the fourth quarter of last year were a shock. Where now is the robust recovery that justified the government’s rapid fiscal retrenchment? In a word, nowhere. It is not just that output fell by 0.5 per cent from the previous quarter. Recovery was always likely to be “choppy”, as Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, noted in a significant speech this week. More important is the big picture: in the fourth quarter GDP was 4.4 per cent below where it had been at its latest peak, in the first quarter of 2008; it was the same as in the first quarter of 2006; and it was 8 per cent below the trend line for the last two decades. In short, the economy is very weak indeed.
英國去年第四季度國內生產總值(GDP）的初步數據令人震驚。用于證明政府迅速推行財政緊縮有道理的強勁復蘇而今何在呢？難覓蹤影！問題不僅在于產出比上季度下滑了0.5%。正如英國央行行長默文?金(Mervyn King)在上周的一次重要講話中所言，復蘇總是難免會有“起伏”。更重要的在于大方向：去年第四季度GDP比上一次的峰值——出現在2008年第一季度——下降了4.4%；與2006年第一季度持平；比最近20年的趨勢值低8%。簡而言之，目前經濟的確非常疲弱。