• The UK’s fate: Neither boom nor bust
    Thursday, 2nd September 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    A PAINFUL, extended soft patch, not a disastrous hard landing: that was the message from yesterday’s batch of global economic indicators. The US manufacturing survey improved in August, spectacularly... [Read more]

  • David Miliband: The least bad option
    Wednesday, 1st September 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    ONE of the stories of the summer has been just how far the Labour party is moving to the left, as its leadership candidates appeal to grassroot members and trade unionists angry at the perceived... [Read more]
  • Why I’m bearish about house prices
    Friday, 6th August 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    ONE of the big lessons of the recession – and of several previous downturns, including Britain’s crisis in the early 1990s and the secondary banking crisis of the 1970s – is just how important... [Read more]
  • China’s power is truly extraordinary
    Thursday, 5th August 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    REMEMBER the days when manufacturing was concentrated in the G7, while emerging economies supplied raw materials and components to feed rich nations’ demand? If you do, you are clearly showing your... [Read more]

  • Why unemployment remains so high
    Wednesday, 4th August 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    UNEMPLOYMENT in the UK is far higher than most commentators realise. The figures used by economists and the media only include people who are looking for work, thus missing out several million... [Read more]
  • Let’s stop whining about tight credit
    Tuesday, 3rd August 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    How unfair. I have a great idea for a new website but my bank doesn’t want to lend me the £50m I need to start it up. It claims not to like my business plan but that can’t possibly be right. What can... [Read more]
  • Bosses’ pay: the long and short of it
    Monday, 2nd August 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THERE have been far too many cases of rewards for failure in corporate Britain in recent years. It must become easier and cheaper to sack bosses who fail to deliver. There are tentative signs,... [Read more]
  • Flawed logic at heart of bonus rules
    Friday, 30th July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    JUST a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable that governments would seek to regulate the way employees were paid by private firms. The recession changed all of this: it soon became the... [Read more]
  • World trade is continuing to recover
    Thursday, 29th July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    WORLD industrial production has overtaken its pre-recession peak – that is the key finding from one of the world’s most useful economic surveys, produced monthly by the Dutch Statistics Bureau. The... [Read more]
  • Honeymoon is over for the coalition
    Wednesday, 28th July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT is time for the markets and investors to start paying attention to Westminster once again. Ever since the election, and especially since the Budget, sentiment towards the UK has improved markedly... [Read more]
  • Vince Cable’s confused bank rhetoric
    Tuesday, 27th July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    VINCE Cable was at it again yesterday, bashing the banks, calling for bonuses to be capped and for a new tax on their profits if they don’t lend more. It was a case of business as usual for the... [Read more]
  • Lessons from Hayward’s departure
    Monday, 26th July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    SHOULD we fell sorry for Tony Hayward, BP’s beleaguered chief executive? His departure from the firm, which he joined in 1982 as a rig geologist in Aberdeen, will be announced imminently; the 53-year... [Read more]
  • Strong US profits good for recovery
    Friday, 23rd July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    TWO major stories have been dominating market sentiment this week. The first was the run-up to the Eurozone bank stress tests; we will know results this afternoon but few are convinced of their... [Read more]
  • Obama turning US into a bureaucracy
    Thursday, 22nd July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    LET us hope Barack Obama actually read the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Bill he signed into law last night. Astonishingly, it is 2,319 pages long and instructs government agencies to create new rules... [Read more]
  • Why Britain needs to save far more
    Wednesday, 21st July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THERE is no better way to kill a dinner party discussion than to bring up the subject of pensions. Just ask your friends when they expect to retire, and how much they hope to earn when they stop... [Read more]
  • Our tax code needs a total overhaul
    Tuesday, 20th July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    LET us hope the coalition is serious about tax simplification. Britain’s taxes are not only far too high; they are also extraordinarily complicated. I was recently talking to a very senior tax lawyer... [Read more]
  • Sweden’s failed Tobin tax experiment
    Monday, 19th July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    BAD ideas have a habit of never really going away. There were renewed calls at the weekend for a Tobin tax on financial transactions, a deeply flawed concept which remains popular in influential... [Read more]
  • Some good bits – but lots of bad stuff
    Friday, 16th July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    SO there you are: President Obama has finally got his Wall Street reform bill, a gargantuan, 2,315-page piece of legislation over which politicians and lawyers will argue for years. As we explain on... [Read more]
  • Dangers of psychological groupthink
    Thursday, 15th July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THERE is something strange about human psychology – or at least, a major flaw in the way we extrapolate trends based on a very limited amount of recent historical data. This is of major importance to... [Read more]
  • Inflation: a crippling tax on savings
    Wednesday, 14th July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    INFLATION did fall in June but once again it was a case of too little, too late. Consumer price inflation (CPI)?dipped to 3.2 per cent, reflecting a slowdown in fuel costs; yet that remains higher... [Read more]
  • Lies, damn lies and the UK’s statistics
    Tuesday, 13th July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    BRITAIN’S economy shrank even more than previously thought during the recession – that, at least, is what the Office for National Statistics informed us yesterday and what we are therefore expected... [Read more]
  • High electricity prices to hurt growth
    Monday, 12th July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    HERE is another reason why the recovery will be muted. Gas and electricity costs will rise substantially in the years ahead and are set to hammer not only consumers but also manufacturers, further... [Read more]
  • We won’t run out of oil any time soon
    Friday, 9th July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THERE is only one rule when it comes to the availability of oil: experts are always convinced it will run out – but it never seems to. Brent crude is now at close to $75 a barrel, which is high but... [Read more]
  • London is losing out from EU diktats
    Thursday, 8th July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    SO there you are. The European Parliament has just voted to locate the planned new EU agencies to regulate banks, markets and insurers in Frankfurt, in a massive blow to London. This provision may... [Read more]
  • This is a square root shaped recovery
    Wednesday, 7th July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    HERE are some more weird and wonderfully expressive ways of describing the economy over the next few years. Yesterday, the Institute of Directors (IoD) warned of an “L of a recovery” – though the... [Read more]
  • Grim is the new Nice for the economy
    Tuesday, 6th July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ECONOMISTS at Morgan Stanley have coined a great phrase to describe what we will be living through over the next few years: it will be Grim – Growth Really Is Mediocre. That is in stark contrast to... [Read more]
  • Austerity won’t cause a double-dip
    Monday, 5th July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    WHENEVER the stock market tanks for an extended period of time – three weeks and 10 per cent seem to be a good rule of thumb – a strange mix of panic and excitement invariably breaks out in some... [Read more]
  • The real causes of the crisis of 2008
    Friday, 2nd July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    FOR all the latest furore surrounding bankers’ bonuses and the rest, we have yet again lost sight of how the crisis actually began, and politicians and regulators’ central role in promoting it. There... [Read more]
  • Reforms needed to boost private jobs
    Thursday, 1st July 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    A MAJOR question dominated the debate in Westminster yesterday: will the private sector create enough jobs to compensate for the looming bloodbath in the public sector? The Office for Budget... [Read more]
  • World trade still driving the recovery
    Wednesday, 30th June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    INVESTORS are right to be worried about the Eurozone. It is the most dangerous part of the world economy, a flawed and failing construct which poses a great threat to the financial system and to the... [Read more]
  • Housing market is looking healthier
    Tuesday, 29th June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THE long upwards run for house prices has ground to a halt. The recent history of UK house prices has confounded many commentators: values plunged when the credit crunch hit, albeit not as much as in... [Read more]
  • The real game is emerging markets
    Monday, 28th June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT is always tempting to build grand theories about national decline following the kind of thrashing meted out to England yesterday afternoon. This should be resisted; Germany v Britain makes great... [Read more]
  • We will all have to work much longer
    Friday, 25th June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    WHY is anybody upset at being told that we are all going to have to work until we are 66 or even older before the state pension kicks in? I would have thought this was obvious – and in fact it has... [Read more]
  • Budget won’t cause a new recession
    Thursday, 24th June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    WE all know what Mark Twain thought of the extraordinary ability of statistics to make even the weakest of arguments sound persuasive. In the main, this week’s emergency Budget was remarkably honest... [Read more]
  • Great progress on the deficit – but far too many unnecessary tax hikes
    Wednesday, 23rd June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    WE?were told to expect a tough Budget, with lots of pain, and that was exactly what we got. Many of the policies announced were necessary; others, however, are clearly misguided. On balance, however... [Read more]
  • Cuts the best way to ensure growth
    Tuesday, 22nd June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    TODAY is D-day for George Osborne; his first Budget, presented to Parliament at 12.30pm today, could be remembered as a turning point in modern British economic history. If he flunks it, Osborne is... [Read more]
  • Public sector’s turn to face recession
    Monday, 21st June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT hasn’t been fun being in the private sector in recent years. It bore all of the cost of the recession, with more than 100 per cent of the contraction in GDP falling on private firms – the public... [Read more]
  • UK needs more creative destruction
    Friday, 18th June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT was Joseph Schumpeter, the great economist, who first understood that capitalism is a process of creative destruction. Every day, new firms are born with fresh ideas, talent and technologies; old... [Read more]
  • Why Mervyn King is the real winner
    Thursday, 17th June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    SO there you are. The Bank of England is now in charge; the FSA is being disbanded and its name junked; and its staff are being reallocated to the Bank and other new agencies (and many will... [Read more]
  • Osborne must show his true colours
    Wednesday, 16th June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THERE will be plenty of banker-bashing from George Osborne when he delivers his first Mansion House speech to the City tonight. The audience of movers and shakers will barely notice; financiers are... [Read more]
  • Time is fast running out for ailing BP
    Tuesday, 15th June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    BP will be destroyed by US litigation – that, at least, was the shocking message forcibly conveyed to me by several senior US business executives at a high-powered dinner party last night. Guests... [Read more]
  • Time for an inquiry into tax system
    Monday, 14th June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THERE are two conflicting trends right now in British economic policy: one is reassuring and invigorating; the other negative and deeply depressing. Both will help determine how successful and... [Read more]
  • It’s wrong to criminalise all accidents
    Friday, 11th June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THIS BP story just isn’t going away. Nobody should be underplaying the pain and suffering caused by the environmental catastrophe that has befallen the Golf of Mexico. We must all hope that the spill... [Read more]
  • Populist reaction to BP is dangerous
    Thursday, 10th June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THERE is much that is ugly about the BP fiasco. It goes without saying that the firm hasn’t covered itself in glory, that Tony Hayward, its CEO, has suffered from foot in mouth disease and that parts... [Read more]
  • Osborne hints at truly radical change
    Wednesday, 9th June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT was not exactly the most convincing of public relation stunts – and predictably enough, George Osborne’s pledge yesterday to engage the public in consultations on the upcoming spending review in a... [Read more]
  • An intriguing plan to reform banking
    Tuesday, 8th June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IF you leave your suit at a dry-cleaner, you retain ownership of the garment, even though possession has passed (temporarily) to the shop. But if you deposit £1,000 in a bank account, who owns the... [Read more]
  • G20’s failure was all too predictable
    Monday, 7th June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT is funny how quickly moods change. It was not that long ago that the G20, courtesy of Gordon Brown’s spin machine, was being hailed as a quasi-mythical authority that was about to solve all of the... [Read more]
  • UK must learn from Australia’s error
    Friday, 4th June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT is not just Britain that is about to shoot itself in the foot with a crippling and destructive tax hike on investors. In our case, it is capital gains that are being targeted; in Australia’s case... [Read more]
  • Slow growth: the UK’s fate for 2010
    Thursday, 3rd June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THERE are many problems facing the UK economy – inflation is far too high, the crisis at BP, which accounts for one pound out of every seven paid out in dividends in the FTSE 100, is trashing the... [Read more]
  • Why Pru’s chair and CEO must resign
    Wednesday, 2nd June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    WHAT a mess. Prudential’s entire strategy lies in tatters, its supposedly transformative $35.5bn bid for AIG’s Asian operations all but over. The firm’s last-ditch attempts at cajoling the US... [Read more]
  • UK Plc hit by series of PR disasters
    Tuesday, 1st June 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THESE are dark days for some of Britain’s flagship firms. Three of our corporate giants are floundering: British Petroleum, whose inability to stem the spill off the US coast is now in the realm of... [Read more]
  • Coalition must listen to City on CGT
    Friday, 28th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT is not often that a major City institution is willing to go on the record with its opposition to a key government policy – usually, the big firms hide behind off-the-record briefings or industry... [Read more]
  • Capital gains tax hike a very bad idea
    Thursday, 27th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT is time for the new government to pause for thought on capital gains tax. John Redwood, the former Tory minister, is right on the money in his article for this newspaper today (see p16): a massive... [Read more]
  • Let us hope this is not a repeat of the crisis of 2008
    Wednesday, 26th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    WE have stumbled into another mini-financial crisis, one which has an outside chance of bringing the global recovery to a shuddering halt. The debt crisis in the Eurozone, far from having been sorted... [Read more]
  • We need cuts to liberate enterprise
    Tuesday, 25th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    APART from the fact that they don’t go far enough, there were two problems with yesterday’s otherwise much needed and very welcome public spending cuts: first, they are not worth as much as the... [Read more]
  • We need more facts and less ranting
    Monday, 24th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THE end game is fast approaching for the Wall Street reforms, which will have a large impact on all sections of London’s financial and business services industries; the Senate has voted on its bill... [Read more]
  • Sovereign crisis now the biggest risk
    Friday, 21st May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    DOWN, down, down – that is how it has felt in the markets over the past few days. Once again, politicians are making matters worse, with Angela Merkel’s obsession with bashing financial institutions... [Read more]
  • Merkel’s actions will weaken the EU
    Thursday, 20th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    ANGELA Merkel has no clue about economics. Her silly decision to slap various restrictions on short-sellers, even though shooting the messenger in this way never works, triggered pandemonium in the... [Read more]
  • Nasty double whammy for investors
    Wednesday, 19th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    WITH all the focus on growth and the deficit, too little attention has been paid to inflation. Yesterday’s disastrous figures show how unwise this has been. The rise in the official consumer price... [Read more]
  • Why hiking Vat will be very painful
    Tuesday, 18th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    SO George Osborne has got his office for budget responsibility, tasked with auditing the public finances and producing independent economic forecasts. It is a splendid idea and a great opportunity... [Read more]
  • Brussels is about to clobber the City
    Monday, 17th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    HOW absurd. A successful British industry, one which even banker-bashers admit wasn’t responsible for the financial crisis, will this week be hammered by the European Union, marking the new... [Read more]
  • Cameron right to cut ministers’ pay
    Friday, 14th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT was good to see David Cameron announcing a 5 per cent pay cut for all government ministers. The savings will be relatively trivial when compared with the £163bn budget deficit but that wasn’t... [Read more]
  • Great stuff on the deficit; less good for UK businesses
    Thursday, 13th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    WE are only just into day three of the new government and already powerful themes are beginning to emerge. The policies announced yesterday can be divided into three categories: those that will... [Read more]
  • Prime Minister, your task will be truly immense
    Wednesday, 12th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    WHEN Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979, she quoted St Francis of Assisi on the steps of 10 Downing Street; after Tony Blair triumphed in 1997, he was greeted by Labour Party workers... [Read more]
  • Why a rainbow coalition falls short
    Tuesday, 11th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    HOW chaotic – but how predictable. All those warnings about the consequences of a hung parliament, including in this newspaper, have turned out to be right, and spectacularly so. The Prime Minister’s... [Read more]
  • New politics even worse than the old
    Monday, 10th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IF that’s the new politics, I already miss the old kind, warts and all. What we witnessed yesterday was embarrassing: groups of exhausted men meeting in secret locations in Whitehall; behind-the-... [Read more]
  • A Lab-Lib deal would be terrible for Britain
    Friday, 7th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    AMONG all of the uncertainties of our first hung Parliament in 36 years, a few definite trends can now be discerned. The first, and most important, is that we are now in coalition talks. Gordon Brown... [Read more]
  • What an astonishing night
    Friday, 7th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    4.20AM: WHAT an election night. The early results have been all over the place. Clearly, the public has rejected the Labour government and the Tories have had more votes than anybody else; but... [Read more]
  • Tories best to tackle our fiscal crisis
    Thursday, 6th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    AT first sight, there are few similarities between Greece, a tiny and desperately mismanaged economy on the fringes of Europe, and Britain, one of the world’s largest economies – and for all the... [Read more]
  • Why Britain needs a Conservative government
    Wednesday, 5th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    WE are now just one day away from the most important election for a generation. The country is at a crossroads: we have crawled out of recession but our prosperity faces its greatest threat since the... [Read more]
  • Cable takes aim at financial privacy
    Tuesday, 4th May 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    OUR front page story contains an intriguing scoop : Vince Cable believes that “there is an argument” for applying to all publically listed companies in all industries his idea of disclosing the name... [Read more]
  • Demagogic debate gives no answers
    Friday, 30th April 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    HOW unedifying, how disappointing, how distressing. Last night’s “debate” on the economy was the worst yet. It was littered with errors, lies and incorrect claims – from all three leaders. The... [Read more]
  • Bigotgate overshadows fiscal crisis
    Thursday, 29th April 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    SO FAR during this election campaign, only two events, both televised, have had a real effect, capturing the public’s imagination. The first leaders’ debate triggered the vertiginous rise of Nick... [Read more]
  • Sovereign disaster looms ever closer
    Wednesday, 28th April 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    GOOD on Standard and Poor’s for downgrading Greece’s bonds to junk status – the only question, as ever with ratings agencies, is why didn’t it act any sooner? The situation has been deteriorating by... [Read more]
  • Osborne fleshes out his reform plan
    Tuesday, 27th April 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    OVER the past week, the election campaign has started to feel a little like Groundhog Day: the polls are barely changing, confirming that we are now in a three-way race pointing to a hung parliament... [Read more]
  • Memo to analysts: you’re too bullish
    Monday, 26th April 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    TO all the analysts out there, it is time to take a cold shower – that, at least, is the logical conclusion to be drawn from the latest issue of the Quarterly journal published by McKinsey & Co,... [Read more]
  • We’re lying to ourselves on spending
    Friday, 23rd April 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THERE was no clear winner from yesterday’s debates, in contrast to last week’s, when Nick Clegg triumphed. This time was very different: Gordon Brown did his best but failed to convince viewers,... [Read more]
  • IMF plan: the wrong kind of reform
    Thursday, 22nd April 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT is a quote that sums up the new cross-party consensus on London’s financial services industry. Reacting to proposals from the International Monetary Fund, which would hit all financial firms –... [Read more]
  • Spend £1bn on education, Goldman
    Wednesday, 21st April 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    HERE is a suggestion for Goldman Sachs: make an immediate £1bn donation to a special new fund for financial and economic education. Then try and rope in a few more of the big banks and financial... [Read more]
  • Tories in desperate fight for survival
    Tuesday, 20th April 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    POLITICS has not returned to normality and may never do so; unless the Nick Clegg bubble is pricked in the next few days, the Liberal Democrats are about to overthrow the established order and hand... [Read more]
  • Black Swans back with a vengeance
    Monday, 19th April 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    CHAOS theory reigns supreme. That is one of the most powerful lessons in life: unexpected events always tend to derail even the best and most carefully thought out plans. We have seen three major... [Read more]
  • The political bubble has yet to burst
    Friday, 16th April 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    BRITISH politics is in a sorry state – that, I’m afraid, is the only conclusion that can be drawn from last night’s leaders’ debate. All three wannabe PMs played it safe; there was barely any... [Read more]
  • Labour and Liberals move to the left
    Thursday, 15th April 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    NEW Labour isn’t dead: about that Alistair Darling could not have been any more emphatic in his interview with City A.M. today. We asked him whether Labour’s manifesto – with its 50p tax,... [Read more]
  • Why this election matters after all
    Wednesday, 14th April 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    DAVID Cameron’s Tories do have a vision for Britain, and it is different from Labour’s. The gulf between the parties is not as wide as it once was, for sure, but the election will matter. Take the... [Read more]
  • Labour manifesto rejects capitalism
    Tuesday, 13th April 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THERE was a time when manifestos were serious, thoughtful pieces of work, the fruit of lengthy policy debates within political parties. Those days are not just long gone but completely forgotten, at... [Read more]
  • Higher tax will make us all worse off
    Monday, 12th April 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    ECONOMICS is not always intuitive – and that is what makes it such a fascinating and important discipline. Take what economists call “incidence” – the study of who actually bears the burden of a... [Read more]
  • No bailout for Greek debt investors
    Friday, 9th April 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    INVESTORS should have seen the sub-prime crisis coming. Yes, I know, it’s easy to say that with the benefit of hindsight, though a fair few economists and investors actually did get it right, not... [Read more]
  • Stronger growth won’t save Labour
    Thursday, 8th April 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT beggars belief that the government is continuing to fight for higher national insurance contributions. Contrary to what their name suggests, these are merely another form of income tax (albeit of... [Read more]
  • The truth about the budget deficit
    Wednesday, 7th April 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    Bizarre – that is the only way to describe the government’s claim that Britain’s cripplingly high budget deficit is somehow at just the “right” level and that attempting to cut it at a faster rate... [Read more]
  • Britain’s election battle starts today
    Tuesday, 6th April 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    LET the battle commence. Gordon Brown will today go to Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen to dissolve parliament, paving the way for a general election on 6 May. It will be a hugely important and... [Read more]
  • FSA right to probe – but care needed
    Thursday, 1st April 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    FOR everybody’s sake, let us hope the Financial Services Authority knows what it is doing. Its massive insider trading raids have certainly shaken up the City – wherever one goes in the Square Mile,... [Read more]
  • Red tape will hit property investors
    Wednesday, 31st March 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    HERE is another reason to be downbeat about the housing market. Buy-to-let investors are being hit by yet more red tape from 6 April; with many already licking their wounds from the slide in house... [Read more]
  • George Osborne begins his fightback
    Tuesday, 30th March 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    ­­­­­AT long last some red meat from the Tories. Their proposal for a partial cancellation of Labour’s national insurance tax hike is a small but important step in the right direction; it is good to... [Read more]
  • What Westfield tells us about UK Plc
    Monday, 29th March 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IF you want to understand what is happening to the economy, you could do worse than to check out the Westfield shopping centre in West London on a weekend. The place was packed to the rafters on... [Read more]
  • Ageing population adds to UK’s woes
    Friday, 26th March 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    OUR panel of City and business professionals’ verdict on the Budget makes grim reading for Alistair Darling: the average grade given was 3.8 out of 10, as we report on pages 1 and 19. Members of the... [Read more]
  • Why the devil is always in the detail
    Thursday, 25th March 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    YOU must hand it to Alistair Darling: to have to unveil a budget deficit of 11.8 per cent of GDP, roughly the same as Greece’s, would have destroyed a lesser politician. The fact that he was able to... [Read more]
  • Don’t expect miracles from Darling
    Wednesday, 24th March 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THERE is just one thing going for Alistair Darling today and that is low expectations. Nobody is anticipating any miracles from the Chancellor, for whom this will probably be the last Budget,... [Read more]
  • Credit is becoming easier to obtain
    Tuesday, 23rd March 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THIS column has been quite gloomy about Britain’s prospects in recent months, and will be even more so for the remainder of this Budget week. So here is a positive story for a change: it is clear... [Read more]
  • A better scheme to reform
    Monday, 22nd March 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    GIVEN the unpopularity of the City, it is no surprise that the political parties are competing to introduce a Barack Obama-style tax on banks’ balance sheets. The Tories announced their unilateral... [Read more]
  • Hubris is always CEOs’ worst enemy
    Friday, 19th March 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT has been an embarrassing couple of days for Tidjane Thiam, Prudential’s chief executive. On Wednesday, he accepted a non-executive directorship at Societe Generale, the French bank; 48 hours later... [Read more]
  • Memo to government: cut spending
    Thursday, 18th March 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    CUT spending as soon as the election is over: that is the resounding message from the City A.M./PHI panel, our unique gauge of opinion among London’s City, financial and business community. The news... [Read more]
  • Sterling’s slump due entirely to polls
    Wednesday, 17th March 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    POLITICS seems to have become just about the only influence on the pound in recent weeks – or so says a fascinating research note by Adam Cole of RBC Capital Markets. He plots sterling’s trade-... [Read more]
  • End our smoke and mirrors economy
    Tuesday, 16th March 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    AMERICANS are great at producing lengthy, blow-by-blow investigations into crises, debacles and disasters. Last week’s 2,200 pager into the Lehman Brothers collapse from US examiner Anton Valukas is... [Read more]
  • Tories need to switch strategy or lose
    Monday, 15th March 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    ALL the opinion polls are giving the same message: Britain is on course for a hung parliament, with no political party in overall control come May. Given that this election ought to be a shoo-in for... [Read more]
  • Europe is risking a trade war with US
    Friday, 12th March 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    Allister Heath
    ONCE again, the European Union has got it wrong. It doesn’t have a clue about regulating hedge funds, private equity or other financial products and players. Brussels is tilting at windmills,... [Read more]
  • The City is not in love with Osborne
    Thursday, 11th March 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    SOMETHING has gone badly wrong for the Tories. Not only is their lead in the national opinion polls looking too low to prevent a hung parliament – they are on just 37 per cent, against 32 per cent... [Read more]
  • Dangers ahead despite bull market
    Wednesday, 10th March 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    YESTERDAY was the first anniversary of the bull market. The FTSE 100 has soared 57 per cent since reaching 3,460 on 9 March 2009, a six-year low, closing at 5,602 yesterday. The S&P 500 touched... [Read more]
  • Global house prices still far too high
    Tuesday, 9th March 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IF you want to find a really cheap house, the best place to go is Detroit, home to America’s crumbling car industry. One in five properties lies empty; the city appears to be in terminal decline, its... [Read more]
  • The public’s priorities are mixed up
    Monday, 8th March 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    Allister Heath
    THERE was a rather interesting set of findings in this weekend’s BPIX poll for the Mail on Sunday. When presented with options about what would make people more likely to vote for a political party,... [Read more]
  • Fresh thinking needed to tackle crisis
    Friday, 5th March 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THANKS to Britain’s spiralling budget deficit and out-of-control national debt, the link between taxation and spending has been broken, with large numbers of voters tricked into believing that ever... [Read more]
  • Why we need to balance the books
    Thursday, 4th March 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT is often forgotten that Britain has defaulted on its national debt in the past. The Great Conversion of 1932, after another economic and financial crisis, was a humiliating moment for what was... [Read more]
  • Britain needs more world-class firms
    Wednesday, 3rd March 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IF you want to understand why so many people have now become so downbeat about the prospects for the UK, look no further than yesterday’s survey of the Hundred Group of FTSE 100 finance directors.... [Read more]
  • UK is facing chaos while Asia booms
    Tuesday, 2nd March 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    WHETHER or not Prudential is overpaying for AIG’s Asian operations remains to be seen. Shareholders, spooked by the prospect of Britain’s biggest-ever rights issue, sent the Pru’s share price... [Read more]
  • Warren Buffett’s next task: train a successor
    Monday, 1st March 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    Allister Heath
    WHEN the times get tough, everyone turns to old favourites. This is especially true of investors, hence the renewed interest in two of the greatest names in finance. Anthony Bolton, Britain’s stock-... [Read more]
  • Green rules pushing up energy prices
    Friday, 26th February 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    ENERGY prices are too high in Britain, even after the recent cuts in gas prices. But those tempted to join in the populist rage at British Gas-owner Centrica’s results yesterday – UK profits hit a... [Read more]
  • Welfare state requires a revolution
    Thursday, 25th February 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    FOR once, some good news. The City has become slightly more optimistic about the size of the budget deficit. The consensus view is that it will hit around £171bn for 2009-10; remarkably, this is... [Read more]
  • From easy money to $1m comic books
    Wednesday, 24th February 2010
    EDITORS LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    Q. What do quantitative easing and super-hero comic books have in common? A. Quite a lot. Cheap money from central bank asset purchases and ultra-low interest rates is helping to reinflate bubbles... [Read more]
  • BA staff can’t resist change for ever
    Tuesday, 23rd February 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    WHAT a shame British Airways’ cabin crew has voted to strike. Willie Walsh, the firm’s chief, is doing a good job in extremely tough conditions to take out costs and ensure the airline will still be... [Read more]
  • How a secret rule caused the crisis
    Monday, 22nd February 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    SLOWLY but surely, some economists are beginning to piece together the real causes of the crisis. And as you might imagine, their findings are strikingly at odds with the conventional explanations,... [Read more]
  • The Beatles were right about taxes
    Friday, 19th February 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    BEATLEMANIA is back – or at least that is what it is starting to feel like when one reads the endless coverage of the proposed sale of the Abbey Road studios by EMI, Guy Hands’ troubled music giant.... [Read more]
  • Public sector’s turn to face squeeze
    Thursday, 18th February 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THERE is a simple reason why unemployment in Britain, while tragically elevated, has remained under control despite the recession: private sector workers have been on a pay freeze for well over a... [Read more]
  • Era of cheap money is gone forever
    Wednesday, 17th February 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THERE is one, overwhelming reason why interest rates are going up on products such as credit cards, even though the Bank of England’s base rate remains very low. It has nothing to do with greed,... [Read more]
  • EU has been hiding its debt for years
    Tuesday, 16th February 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT is astonishing how short our collective memories have become. It was once well-known that Greece, Italy and other countries had used dodgy tricks to embellish their public finances prior to the... [Read more]
  • We must grow ourselves out of debt
    Monday, 15th February 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    BRITAIN has been spending more than it earns for years now, which is why the government and individuals alike are crumbling under a huge burden of debt. Two kinds of policies are needed to get us out... [Read more]
  • Greek rescue doesn’t solve anything
    Friday, 12th February 2010
    ALLISTER HEATH
    HOW predictable. Yesterday’s supposed bail-out of Greece was short on details and long on feel-good verbiage, as the City soon came to understand. And even if a loan guarantee from EU countries does... [Read more]
  • Britain must not fork out for bailout
    Thursday, 11th February 2010
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THERE are two policies the British government must pursue over the looming bail-out of Greece and other weaker Eurozone countries, a move which looks increasingly likely and which will be debated in... [Read more]
  • Bailing out Greece is not the answer
    Wednesday, 10th February 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT is now clear that Germany, the European Central Bank and others are seriously talking about bailing out Greece. The negotiations could still collapse; but there has been a significant shift over... [Read more]
  • Don’t assume Pigs will be bailed out
    Tuesday, 9th February 2010
    ALLISTER HEATH
    HISTORY is repeating itself – and much more quickly than we seem to realise. The consensus view appears to be that Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain – the PIGS – will by hook or by crook be given a... [Read more]
  • Rise of Texas is a lesson for London
    Monday, 8th February 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    HERE is an intriguing question which says a lot about modern America but which everybody here in London always gets wrong. Which US state is home to most big companies? New York, surely, host to... [Read more]
  • Euro debt crisis worse even than UK’s
    Friday, 5th February 2010
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THERE is a crucial yet often over-looked difference between the mounting fears over the solvency of Greece, Portugal and Spain and worries about Britain’s debt mountain. All four countries are... [Read more]
  • Pain ahead for the British economy
    Thursday, 4th February 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    Allister Heath
    WE simply don’t realise how painful the next few years are going to be – that, in a nutshell, was the message grim-faced analysts from the Institute for Fiscal Studies delivered yesterday. The... [Read more]
  • Tory economic plan is a damp squib
    Wednesday, 3rd February 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    Allister Heath
    IT should have been an important moment, the day the Tories unveiled their masterplan to sort out the economy. So it was with some trepidation that I turned to George Osborne’s 23-page document,... [Read more]
  • It’s time to halt quantitative easing
    Tuesday, 2nd February 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    Allister Heath
    ONE of the most important pieces of data is also one of the hardest to understand. Working out how much money is circulating at any one time in the economy is the Holy Grail of macroeconomics; those... [Read more]
  • Vast state payrolls will veto reforms
    Monday, 1st February 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    Allister Heath
    MORE evidence of a growing public-private divide: 57 per cent of extra UK jobs created during 1997-2007 were either officially on the government’s payrolls or “para-state” – technically private but... [Read more]
  • It’s hard not to be gloomy on the UK
    Friday, 29th January 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THERE has long been a huge gap in Britain between London and the South East and the rest of the country. The former is powered by private sector growth; the latter depends ever-more on the public... [Read more]
  • No wonder there is no British Apple
    Thursday, 28th January 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    WHY isn’t there a British Apple? The sight of Steve Jobs standing up again on stage last night to unveil yet another blockbuster – this time, the iPad – is a stark reminder of how bad we have become... [Read more]
  • British economy faces years of pain
    Wednesday, 27th January 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    “THE UK is a must to avoid. Its gilts are resting on a bed of nitroglycerine.” So says Pimco’s Bill Gross – and given yesterday’s pathetic 0.1 per cent fourth quarter growth, he is clearly right. It... [Read more]
  • All can fail: my new manifesto for the banks
    Tuesday, 26th January 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    REGULAR readers of this column will know that I am no fan of many of the proposals being cooked up to reform the banks. I have opposed Barack Obama’s plan to ban retail banks from engaging in... [Read more]
  • We must learn from financial history
    Monday, 25th January 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    Allister Heath
    SPEAKING to this newspaper last night, Lord Myners, the City minister, points out that banks’ proprietary trading and investments in hedge funds and private equity were “in no way central” to the... [Read more]
  • New rules would be bad for London
    Friday, 22nd January 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    HOW predictable. No sooner was Barack Obama humiliated by the Massachusetts electorate earlier this week – his left-wing candidate lost Ted Kennedy’s ultra safe seat to a radical conservative – than... [Read more]
  • UK about to miss a great opportunity
    Thursday, 21st January 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THERE are two, diametrically opposed ways to respond to the immense challenges posed by globalisation and the rise of the emerging markets. The first – and right way – is that followed by much of... [Read more]
  • Price of everything going up too fast
    Wednesday, 20th January 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    BRITAIN has a credibility problem – and no, I’m not only talking about the government’s hypocritical and self-serving protectionist rhetoric on Cadbury. Yesterday’s inflation figures were even more... [Read more]
  • A sad day as Cadbury bites the dust
    Tuesday, 19th January 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT is a great shame that Cadbury’s management has succumbed so easily to Kraft’s advances. Ever since I can remember, the British confectioner had been stalked by predators; yet for years it defied... [Read more]
  • Time to reform our monetary policy
    Monday, 18th January 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    Allister Heath
    THERE have now been dozens of books and thousands of research papers on the causes of the crisis yet we are no nearer to a consensus. But there is one factor on which virtually all US analysts agree... [Read more]
  • Obama’s tax risks new credit crunch
    Friday, 15th January 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT is clear that Barack Obama’s latest scheme to tax the banks, just like Gordon Brown’s own super-tax, will go down well with the electorate. But both will do little to make the economy more stable... [Read more]
  • Google is right to pull out of China
    Thursday, 14th January 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    GOOD on Google. The tech giant now seems almost certain to pull out of China in an astonishing blaze of publicity. It takes real guts to thumb one’s nose at a country of 1.3bn potential consumers; it... [Read more]
  • UK Plc has much to learn from Tesco
    Wednesday, 13th January 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    NAPOLEON Bonaparte was right: Britain is a nation of shopkeepers. Tesco’s great figures yesterday confirm that the retailer remains one of the UK’s few truly world-class corporate giants. Group sales... [Read more]
  • The real reason for London’s prosperity
    Tuesday, 12th January 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    AT least three times since the 1960s, the City has been saved by the stupidity of others. London’s economic prominence is partly home-grown, of course, not least thanks to the free-market reforms of... [Read more]
  • Britain needs to rediscover how to save
    Monday, 11th January 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    Allister Heath
    BELIEVE it or not but many forecasters are becoming more upbeat about Britain’s prospects for the coming year. HSBC, whose predictions are always cautious, is expecting growth of 2.2 per cent, much... [Read more]
  • Asian nations laugh at our incompetence
    Friday, 8th January 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    IT’S all rather sad. While we count the laughably high costs of a little snow, obsess about minor policy differences in?Westminster and argue over whether our economic performance in 2010 will be... [Read more]
  • Labour can’t even organise a proper plot
    Thursday, 7th January 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    HOW  incompetent can you be? If the Labour Party had any sense, it would remove Gordon Brown as soon as possible; all the polls show that Labour would gain at least some ground with any half-decent... [Read more]
  • Labour can't even organise a proper plot
    Thursday, 7th January 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    HOW incompetent can you be? If the Labour Party had any sense, it would remove Gordon Brown as soon as possible; all the polls show that Labour would gain at least some ground with any half-decent... [Read more]
  • Iceland sees the first anti-bailout revolt
    Wednesday, 6th January 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    SOMEONE should give Gordon Brown a copy of John Maynard Keynes’ The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Published in 1919, it addressed post-war Germany – but the book is uncannily relevant to the... [Read more]
  • Why the UK’s factories are back to 1973
    Tuesday, 5th January 2010
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    EVERYBODY knows that financial services have been the hardest hit sector during the recession, right? Wrong. Manufacturing has been by far a greater drag on UK plc than services, including finance;... [Read more]
  • Why 2010 will be make or break for UK
    Monday, 4th January 2010
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    IT is hard to believe that just three years ago the UK economy was still being lauded as a great success story; our fall from grace has been spectacular. In 2007, London was overtaking New York as... [Read more]
  • It will be easy to lose money this year
    Friday, 18th December 2009
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    ONE of the great paradoxes of 2009 was that economic meltdown went hand in hand with strong gains for many investors. After a disastrous few months when everybody was pricing in the end of... [Read more]
  • Recession over but tough 2010 for UK
    Thursday, 17th December 2009
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    ALLISTER HEATH
    THERE will be so many challenges confronting the British economy next year that it is hard to know where to start. The last remaining hard-core bulls, who still believe in a v-shaped recovery, will... [Read more]
  • Nobody should ever be bailed out again
    Wednesday, 16th December 2009
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    Allister Heath
    CAPITALISM only really works when success is rewarded and failure punished. So as the New Year approaches, here is a radical suggestion: let us usher in a new era of personal responsibility. Let 2010... [Read more]
  • ­Selfish strikes to cripple British Airways
    Tuesday, 15th December 2009
    EDITOR’S LETTER
    Allister Heath
    WHAT a tragic outcome at British Airways. The airline’s management is hardly perfect but it is almost unbelievable that BA’s staff have chosen to walk out like this. The strike – supported by an... [Read more]
  • People don’t come here for the weather
    Monday, 14th December 2009
    EDITOR'S LETTER
    Allister Heath
    In 1733, Voltaire, one of France’s greatest thinkers, wrote a series of letters on the English nation, describing some of the extraordinary going-ons he had discovered during his exile to this... [Read more]