13/04/2013 00:00
TW
0

by RAY FLEMING
SEEING green shoots sprouting is rather like clutching at straws (if I may be allowed this metaphor mixing). It's natural that people want to talk the economy up - yesterday the BBC's Today programme paraded a newly-established estate agent in southern England who claimed to have sold six houses in his first week in business. But exceptions probably prove the rule that the gloomy recession weather has set in and will not lift until the end of the year at best.

A new international global survey undertaken by the WIN network of pollsters has produced interesting comparative evidence from Britain, France, Germany, Japan and the United States; it shows that a negative view of economic prospects prevails in the three European countries and Japan but the outlook in the United States is considerably more optimistic. In the US some 46 per cent of members of the public said they expected the economic situation to get worse whereas in Europe and Japan this negative view was held by between
61 and 67 per cent of those questioned. Again, Americans were the most optimistic about recovery at 14 per cent of respondents with Europe and Japan averaging five per cent. International polls of the kind organised by WIN cannot be as accurate as national polls for a number of reasons; the sample for the poll reported above was just over 20'000 people in 25 countries, including all the G8 leading industrial nations. But they are useful in giving an approximate world view on global issues.