Spend, spend, spend – think of it as your patriotic duty

After months of lockdown, many of us will have some money to spare. If you do, says Merryn Somerset Webb, spend it.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak © Heathcliff O'Malley - WPA Pool/Getty Images
Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak: hoping for a V-shaped recovery © Getty
(Image credit: Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak © Heathcliff O'Malley - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

There’s a lot of pessimism about at the moment. Unusually, not much of that pessimism is on show at MoneyWeek. I am still fairly convinced that the economic recovery from the Covid-19 virus will be V-shaped – a view now shared (somewhat surprisingly) by the Bank of England’s chief economist Andy Haldane (read his views in full at bankofengland.co.uk). The recovery, he says, has already been “materially faster” than expected.

We have also been reasonably impressed by the government’s economic response to the crisis so far (the building of a financial bridge over the crisis via grants, loans and furloughing is the key to the “V”). Parts of Project Speed also look like something of a silver lining. Of course it should be easier to make shops into houses. And while we aren’t mad for more government intervention into everything, if you have already identified £5bn of capital projects that are happening at some point anyway, why not get on with it? We’ll leave aside for now the question of why – when there is no very obvious crisis – things have to be done so slowly.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up
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.