The lingering effects of the financial crisis

Everywhere you look, you can see the effects of the financial crisis ten years ago, says Merryn Somerset Webb – even in the Christmas trees.

Anyone buying a real Christmas tree in America this year has suffered a nasty dose of sticker shock. Depending on where and what you buy, you'll pay up to 20% more this year than last year. Why? It all goes back to the great financial crisis of 2007.

In the confusing and confidence-sapping years immediately after the crash, tree farmers planted fewer trees than usual. A seven- or eight-foot tree (remember the Americans have rather bigger houses than we do) takes ten years to grow. So the effects of the crisis are only now showing up in the supply, and hence price, of trees.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.