Last week heralded the one-year countdown to the London 2012 Olympics and triggered a series of grandstanding events around the UK capital as the nation aims to fully maximise the commercial opportunities of staging the greatest sporting event on the planet.

Unfortunately, nobody told the British economy.

As the quirky Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, quipped alongside PM David Cameron and senior IOC executives as to “how the transport system would be ready, how the hotels and restaurants would be ready and how the people of London would be ready” the economy spluttered along posting an anaemic 0.2% growth for the second quarter of 2011.

Britain’s plight was outdone by their American cousins across the pond who stole the show with a game of economic Armageddon cat and mouse.

This was followed by the financial services sector – the spine of UK economic strength over the past two decades, shocked markets this week with a number of the big boys announcing job losses.

HSBC and Barclays have both announced major intended cutbacks this week, with the former looking to shave 30,000 of its global workforce over three years, while the latter will look to offload 3,000 unfortunate souls.

Yes, much of these redundancies are to be blamed on the banking reforms coming out of Europe but with economic growth so weak in the UK, the US (where Barclays derives a significant chunk of its revenue) and in parts of Europe one can only assume that these redundancies will include a roll-up of the reforms and weak economic conditions.

HSBC employs 52,000 people in the UK with 15,000 of these in London.

The IMF, which predicts economic growth of 1.5% this year for the UK and rising to an ‘ears pinned back’ 2.3% next year, has suggested the Coalition Government adopt a series of boosting measures in the event that the debt cancer in mainland Europe leads to a major cardiac arrest for the global economy.

The services economy is showing creeping growth while UK manufacturing continues to shrink – a challenge for the Government is creating the level of new jobs requires to push the economy forward when it is becoming clear that reliance on financial services to swell State coffers is far from certain in the tough years ahead

unshaven girl займ 500 рублейзайм на яндекс деньги без паспортагде взять займ под материнский капитал