Recession close to a ‘sure thing’

Albert Edwards, Societe Generale’s gloomy global strategist, fired off a strongly worded weekly email to clients yesterday, arguing that the global economy might already be in recession and dismissing “perpetually bullish analysts” as “diehard happy clappies”.

Even by Edwards’ standards, the five-page note is harsh and uncompromising, accusing the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England of being “wholly complicit” in perpetrating “daylight robbery” on the middle classes, and implying that riots in the UK are a product of this theft. Of Ben Bernanke, he says the Fed chairman’s certainty of view is “simply far too dangerous” and that the key lesson of the crisis has yet to be...