Recession: the beginning of the end?

Well, it could well be that at some point in the next three months we see a Government minister flourish a set of statistics that tell us the UK economy's seemingly never-ending bungee jump is over.
Government form on the use of statistics is normally right up there with kids in sweetie shops. But in this case they could well be right.
How come?
For starters the economy has actually been in recession far longer than the official figures suggest. If a recession is defined as successive periods of falling growth it stands to reason that the problems which caused the economy to shudder to a halt were present well before that point.
Indeed, I did an interview earlier this year with a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (these are the people that set interest rates) who told me that the key signs of recession had been around since at least April last year.
So it's about time the single most depressing word in the economic dictionary left the stage.
And it will. It'll do it because all the froth that grew up in the economy when we were necking credit like cheap lager has gone down the plughole, taking quite a few jobs with it.
It'll do it also because at least a bit of the credit that banks normally make available is now more easily available.
Two buts, though.
Don't mistake one month's positive figures as a sign that everything's fine and dandy. An economy that's hit rock bottom often bounces up and down a bit before it finds a way forwards.
Secondly, even if the economy returns to normal it still won't feel anything like as hyperactive as it was between 2004 and 2007.
That's because experts now say that what we went through during those years was abnormal – abnormal growth, abnormal wealth.
There's a third 'but' now I think about it. This is the one that will have a huge influence on the shape of our economy going forward and it will be the subject of political controversy for months to come.
Yup, it's the thorny subject of public spending.
Economists will tell you that the UK economy was far too dependent on two sources of growth in the boom years: the housing market and Government spending, both of which grew at above average rates, neither of which was sustainable.
The housing market is coming back to some sort of life (though it is still not out of the woods), but public spending is caught between a rock and a hard place.
To stop the banks collapsing and the economy with it, the Government is continuing to borrow sums which belong in the realms of theoretical mathematics. At some stage, this supertanker of debt has to be paid back.
What the Government can't do is simply yank up taxes to do this because that would kill off a business-led recovery.
So it will have to strike a middle ground, increasing taxes to a point which doesn't condemn businesses and jobs to a life in the slow lane.
And spending less.
It's for voters and politicians to decide what the spending priorities should be. I hope they don't skimp on accurate economic statistics.