There has been a justifiably sceptical response on the web pages of the South Wales Evening Post to the suggestion by Secretary of State for Wales, Paul Murphy that the recession could be over in a matter of months.
So far removed from reality does this prediction appear that the good people of Swansea could be forgiven for thinking that the man who visited their fair City this week might have been a lookalike hired to discredit the government.
Like Gordon Brown, Mr. Murphy is relying on the G20 summit in April to pull an economic miracle out of the hat. Unfortunately, both for him and the country, economies do not turn around that quickly and instant solutions do not tend to be available.
In fact as history has shown time and again, recessions, like hurricanes have their own momentum and need blow themselves out. It is possible to hurry them along by state intervention but even if that action can be co-ordinated on a global scale any fix will take time to work its way through.
The problem for Mr. Brown and Mr. Murphy is that most people know this and as a consequence nobody believes them when they say they can defy the odds. All they are doing is undermining their own credibility and that hits confidence in the government and in the economy.
Still it was nice to see the Secretary of State acknowledge what a good job the Welsh Liberal Democrat-led Council have done in positioning Swansea ‘to take advantage of any green shoots of recovery.’
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