The optimist - the new member of the MPC Professor David Miles who spoke at our economics society recently and is decidedly bullish in this article in the Western Daily Mail about the impact of the huge macro policy stimulus.

“Economic history teaches us that a combination of tax cuts, running large fiscal deficits, substantial cuts in interests rates and more quantitative easing is likely, with a certain time lag, to have a substantial impact on demand in the economy and it may well be that the worst of the recession may well be behind us.”

On the other hand, the IMF - “The current recession is likely to be unusually long and severe and the recovery sluggish,” the IMF said in releasing two chapters from its twice-yearly World Economic Outlook (WEO). Have a read here