Here's the latest news for the UK economy. Car sales: up. House prices: up. Manufacturing output: up.
The evidence is pretty solid. Recovery is under way and it cuts across sectors. This is not just confined to the City. Five big questions arise, therefore. Is this for real? Will it last? Why is it happening? What could go wrong? Will it end in tears? Answers to all five questions are available or will be available within the next day or so.
The broad-based nature of the pick-up in activity indicates this is more than a flash in the pan. From building sites to shopping malls and now factories, the data points strongly to recovery.
Will it last? Probably, unless events in the eurozone or elsewhere in the global economy blow the UK off course. The Bank of England will make sure that monetary conditions are kept ultra-loose until there is irrefutable evidence that there will be no growth relapse.
Plentiful and ultra cheap money is the main reason the recovery is happening. Official interest rates at 0.5% for more than four years, £375bn of quantitative easing, Funding for Lending and now Help to Buy, have created the conditions in which consumers are happier to spend and, more tentatively, businesses prepared to invest.
The ratings agency Fitch Tuesday provided the answer to the fourth question. The thing that could go wrong with the UK is what always goes wrong: a recovery that starts in the housing market gets out of hand, with a ballooning trade deficit and growing inflationary pressure. Too much easy finance leads to a bubble that eventually bursts when interest rates are raised or house prices simply become too hot.
As to where it will end, the answer to that is pretty simple. In tears.
