Deloitte Monday Briefing: Assessing the Outlook for Growth
* A London taxi driver told me last week that in his ten hours
of ferrying people around London the previous day his average speed
had been 8.4mph. This is slower than a horse or a bicycle and even
slower than the 9mph average speed recorded by TfL in Central
London at the start of this year. The cabbie blamed increasing
levels of traffic, a rash of new building projects and Crossrail
for the slowdown.
* We love obscure economic indicators and this one suggests that,
in London, at least, activity is picking up. But on a less
parochial level, what are the prospects for recovery?
* Things certainly have changed in the last six months.
Financial markets now believe that a gathering recovery will force
the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Federal
Reserve to raise interest rates in 2013, much earlier than had been
expected at the start of this year. The previously moribund UK
housing market
