The growing risk that Western economies will slide back into recession was underlined yesterday by new figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, showing that growth is continuing to slow.
The economies of the OECD's 34 members grew by just 0.2 per cent during the second quarter of the year, the organisation said, with the annualised rate of growth slowing to 1.6 per cent from 2.4 per cent during the first three months of this year.
The decline reflects the disappointing figures posted by all of the G7 major economies, where the United States' anaemic second-quarter gross domestic product growth of 0.3 per cent actually turned out to be the highlight.
Growth in the United Kingdom was just 0.2 per cent, in France 0.1 per cent and in Germany zero. On an annualised basis, the UK's growth rate of 0.7 per cent is the second worst in the G7, behind only Japan - at minus 0.9 per cent. By contrast, Germany is growing at an annualised rate of 2.7 per cent.
The slowdown in the UK has led to calls for George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to scale back his deficit-reduction plans - which he has rejected consistently - and for the Bank of England to consider another round of quantitative easing to stimulate the economy.
