Editor’s notes: The uncertain art of measuring the UK’s economic uncertainty December 2, 2016 You may not have seen it on the News at Ten but Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee member Kristin Forbes delivered a fascinating speech last week on the nature of economic uncertainty and how best it can be measured. As Donald Trump said when he delivered his victory speech, “it’s a complicated business, folks”. [...]
Network Rail rakes in £1.4m from Victoria Station toilet as Southern strikes roll on December 2, 2016 The delays and disputes are bad enough. Now, City A.M. has found out that Network Rail is making 67 per cent more on its toilet in Victoria due to the Southern strikes. Network Rail owns the loos in Victoria station, which hosts the Southern train service. This year, Network Rail’s takings at the toilet have [...]
How to prepare your portfolio for inflation December 2, 2016 | City Talk Concerns about inflation were already on the rise. Donald Trump’s victory in the US election has further stoked expectations that price pressure, absent in most Western economies since the financial crisis, may make a return in 2017 and beyond. The basics Inflation is a measure of how fast the prices of goods and services are [...]
The ‘75%’ chance that the Santa Rally exists December 2, 2016 | City Talk Stock markets are more likely to rise in December than any other month, according to analysis of nearly three decades of data. The analysis conducted by Schroders, which covers the world’s largest markets, adds to the debate over the existence of the “Santa Rally”, an alleged effect often dismissed by seasoned investors. Our analysis measured two [...]
Four facts about Fintech Connect 2016 you need to know December 2, 2016 | City Talk Are you a fintech pro? Then you'll know 2016 has been a year that keeps on giving where events are concerned. If you’re going to Fintech Connect Live this week, you’re sure of a big surprise: it promises to be bigger than ever. Why? Because every second you’re there, £634 will be made in fintech in the [...]
Richmond Park by-election result: Zac Goldsmith loses to Lib Dem candidate Sarah Olney December 2, 2016 Lib Dem candidate Sarah Olney has won the Richmond Park by-election. Olney was running against the constituency's incumbent MP, Zac Goldsmith, and took 20,510 votes against the former Tory's 18,638. The result is a shocking turnaround from the 2015 General Election when Goldsmith commanded 58 per cent of the vote. Goldsmith triggered the by-election by resigning [...]
Faith alone won’t keep the euro alive indefinitely December 2, 2016 The euro is an astonishing achievement. Not, obviously, because it’s been a tremendous economic success: unable to devalue, the economies of much of southern Europe are being gutted, facing gravity-defying rates of unemployment (20 percentage points higher in Greece than in Germany), painful efforts to cut wages to restore competitiveness, and essentially unsolvable debt crises. The [...]
Public Accounts Committee: MPs raise concerns over HM Revenue & Customs’ annual performance December 2, 2016 A key parliamentary oversight committee has criticised the taxman's plans to cut costs and urged authorities to lead the way in combating the opaqueness of multinational corporations' tax affairs. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) today revealed its conclusions within its annual report on HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). Plans are being implemented by HMRC to cut costs by [...]
Donald Trump’s unhappy fate is to oversee a financial crisis far worse than the last December 2, 2016 An earthquake doesn’t care if you’re progressive or populist. It destroys your house all the same. Likewise a financial crisis is indifferent to a politician’s policy mix. Systemic crises proceed according to their own dynamic based on the array of agents in a system, and systemic scale. The tempo of recent crises in 1994, 1998, and [...]
Europe will suffer if Brussels shuts the City of London out of EU markets December 2, 2016 Benjamin Franklin once said that “you may delay, but time will not”. With Article 50 to be triggered before the end of March pending the Supreme Court ruling, how much more time can Westminster and Brussels policy-makers really afford to spend on political rhetoric? Can we really ignore warnings from European officials that UK plans to [...]