Economic recovery?

Asks whether we are seeing the first green shoots of an economic recovery.

Business Daily hears from a historian that there was similar talk only a year after the 1929 crash, which proved to be utterly wrong.

In the past few weeks, there've been some important economic signs that things are, not exactly getting better, but getting worse at a slower pace.

Certainly that's what the politicians would have us think. The financial markets had been showing something of a bounce upwards - though plenty of people warned that it could be a short-lived rally.

And indeed fears about the spread of swine flu have further upset the markets. But if you stick to the real economic and financial signs, some politicians and policy-makers see evidence of the first stirrings of green shoots, which given time, may blossom forth.

Butl is all that optimism - even though it is in each case guarded optimism - justified - is there light at the end of the tunnel? Or is it the glow of a false dawn? Tom Nicholas, Professor of Economic History at Harvard University, warns us to be cautious.