It’s Groundhog Day for Obama’s economic team

In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, there lives a fat rodent called Phil whose job it is in the middle of every winter to tell us how much longer we must suffer through the cold and dark until spring. Phil is a groundhog and his annual prediction is taken very seriously. There is even a celebrated film about him, starring Bill Murray.

But this year Phil has been usurped by Barack Obama and Ben Bernanke. The President and his bearded Federal Reserve chief emerge daily from their offices like Phil from his hollow tree stump to tell us that ‘green shoots’ are poking through the hard and frozen earth despite obvious signs that winter, economically speaking at least, will be with us for a long time to come. Central to their claims that the worst of the downturn is over is a small amount of evidence that seems to show credit markets easing and banks beginning to lend again.