We dodged a double-dip recession, so what next?

This is Money Podcast

This is Money

Business News, Business, Investing, News

4.1 • 650 Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2021

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The double dip recession is off.

The GDP figures are in for the final three months of 2020 and the UK economy grew by 1%, according to the ONS, despite widespread expectations that it would shrink again.

This means that even if the latest – and hopefully last – lockdown shrinks the economy in the first quarter of 2021 then we will avoid the dreaded double-dip – as you need two consecutive quarters of negative growth (forgive the economics speak) for a recession.

Of course, we don’t know when this lockdown will end or how heavy an impact it will have on the economy, so what happens in the first half of 2021 is up in the air.

But why didn’t GDP fall in the final stretch of last year, is there any way we could we claw our way to growth in the first chunk of this year, and how bad was the coronavirus year of 2020 for the UK?

On this week’s podcast, Georgie Frost, George Nixon and Simon Lambert dive into the GDP numbers to take a look at what this all means.

Also on the show, are we finally going to see an end to the scam refund lottery from banks for those conned into sending money to fraudsters, George explains what people need to know about that and also the issue of disabled children child trust funds.

Plus, why has Tesla bought bitcoin, what does it mean and what on earth is Elon Musk playing at with his crypto tweets at the moment.

And finally, should you head for Oxbury Bank – the farmer-focussed lender with a new top savings rate?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to This Is Money podcast. I'm Georgie Frost and alongside me and editor Simon Lammett. Today is reported George Nixon.
0:06.5	And coming up, the pandemic has proved fertile breeding ground for scammers. But whether you get your money back from your bank can be something of a lottery.
0:14.9	Will new rules being proposed change all that? Also today, how much significance should we put in Tesla buying over a billion
0:22.3	pounds of Bitcoin? Is this a sign that big business is getting on board with crypto or just a
0:28.1	one-off? Plus, with tips on where to go for investing inspiration, a victory over child
0:33.6	trust funds of disabled children, and the ultimate piggy bank. But um, Britain's first
0:39.0	agricultural bank in a hundred years launches with competitive saving deals to help British farmers.
0:43.9	But is it any good? Don't be getting stuff to date with all the latest breaking money news.
0:47.7	Just go to this ismoney.com.uk. UK or download the app. But first, a quick word about
0:54.0	the state of the economy. We got GDP figures
0:57.0	out this week. It's not great, not going to lie, but really could it have been any other way?
1:03.7	And overall, the economy contracted 9.9% last year, more than twice as much as the previous
1:10.2	largest annual fall on record. But every cloud,
1:14.6	not as bad as some economists had been expecting, no double-dip recession, and apparently we're
1:19.6	going to bounce back like coiled springs once the lockdown is over. Once lockdown is over, Simon, so how bad is this?
1:30.8	And are we going to bounce back like a coiled spring?
1:34.3	Good question.
1:35.9	I'll answer the last one first.
1:37.7	Because if we think back to November and the Bank of England's inflation report and interest rate decision where they give
1:47.0	their outlook for the economy. We were going to bounce back now. This was it. We were bouncing
1:53.2	back now. On the proviso that the November lockdown finished when it was meant to finish,
1:57.8	and the November lockdown did finish when it was meant to finish.
	...

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