Yahoo Finance Simon English: Enough economic caution, time to go for it
The Great British public is tentative. While pubs will probably do good trade tomorrow and God knows the nation from Boris down needs a haircut, other parts of the economy remain mired in lockdown mode.
I called in to the Westfield near White City the other day to do my patriotic duty – SuperDry shorts and sunglasses – and have seldom felt so alone in a public space. It wasn’t a shopping centre, it was a ghost town. There was plenty of supply and not enough demand.
This fear of public spaces is perfectly understandable. If you hold a nightly TV special for weeks on end, the theme of which is “How many of us died today”, folk are going to feel nervous. For a while, that was the point. They needed to be nervous.
It is time to move on. Today’s latest PMI stats offer at least some hope. The CIPS/Markit survey is one of those unwieldy, if closely watched estimates, that don’t make a lot of sense to non-economists. Broadly, a number above 50 means growth. Anything below it means contraction.
The June figure, as lockdown eased, is 47.7 – which is nearly there and way better than the 30 in May and the 13.8 recorded in April when the economy was intentionally ground to a halt.
Today’s figures show that business is ready to start moving. It needs the public to follow its lead. For most of us, a mask, hand-sanitizer, social distancing and contactless payment leads to a perfectly acceptable level of risk.
Enough of the caution; let’s go for it.
