2025-01-10
46 分钟The Economist.
In the summer of 2007, Kanye West was topping the charts with Stronger.
The song could have described the UK economy.
The year since 1993 had seen the longest period of economic expansion on record.
Annual average GDP growth was 3%.
Annual productivity growth was around 2%.
Brits got a lot for their money in America, where one pound bought them $2.
London's financial sector was booming,
and one in every 12 pounds of British economic output was being generated by the financial services industry.
But it came to an abrupt end by the close of that year.
Good evening.
One of Britain's biggest mortgage lenders, Northern Rock,
is applying to the Bank of England for emergency financial support.
In September of 2007, the British lender Northern Rock collapsed.
That was followed in 2008 by US banks Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and the ensuing global financial crisis.
While those events might seem like ancient history now,
they marked the start of an economic funk that the UK hasn't been able to move out of.
Those pre-2008 numbers now sound like the stuff of fantasy.
Between 2009 and 2023, GDP growth slowed to an annual average of just 1.5%.
After accounting for inflation,