• 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]