An open letter to protectionists in all the political parties May 7, 2014 Dear protectionists I fear that you haven’t fully thought through your opposition to Pfizer’s bid for Astrazeneca. So here are a few questions for you; sorry in advance for being blunt. Why do you think you have a special, superior knowledge about which companies should be protected and encouraged, and which shouldn’t be? Do you [...]
An inconvenient truth about Britain’s growing housing crisis May 6, 2014 IT WAS hard not to despair at the latest scare story on empty homes – apparently, there are 60,000 of them being “hoarded” by rich “buy to leave” investors in London alone, and the Labour leader is going to do something about it. There’s just a problem. The figures are nonsense, they don’t relate to [...]
Markets aren’t perfect – but are far better than the alternative May 6, 2014 MOST economists have a limited shelf life. I suspect that Thomas Piketty, the fashionable French socialist whose book on wealth and inequality is topping the charts, will ultimately fall into that category. Gary Becker, a brilliant US Nobel Prize winner in economics who died on Saturday, is the exact opposite: he will continue to influence [...]
We are stuck in a disastrous spiral of misplaced interventionism May 1, 2014 VICIOUS circles are the new normal in British politics. Bad, often economically illiterate, policies create poor outcomes; voters become angry; the opposition (and in some cases the government) responds with hopeless populist policies intended to alleviate the symptoms of the previous round of bad policies; the situation worsens; disenchantment with the establishment rises ever further. [...]
Labour market flexibility has saved the UK – so don’t bash it April 30, 2014 IT’S all in the name. What would you prefer, a zero hours contract, or a flexible arrangement with a company that means that you will be asked to work as and when you are needed, with hours variable? An unscientific focus group confirms the obvious: the first option sounds nasty and pointless (suggesting no work [...]
Problems remain but the British economy is growing again April 29, 2014 ANY discussion of the latest economic growth statistics must always be prefaced by a health warning. These are early estimates which are often revised, sometimes drastically. Citigroup calculates that between1999 and 2010, the year on year growth in British GDP was revised up by 0.5 per cent on average, more than in any other G7 [...]
Politicians must not interfere to block takeovers of UK firms April 28, 2014 THERE is how the French do things, and then there is the British way. Germany’s Siemens and America’s General Electric are both seeking to woo French politicians as they prepare their rival offers for Alstom. In the UK, however, America’s Pfizer knows who it really has to convince if it is to pull off its [...]
Why MPs need to vote against the expensive folly that is HS2 April 28, 2014 TRAIN and tube lines are vital for London. Most people commute by rail, and projects like Crossrail or the Northern Line extension will do a huge amount of good. We need even more of them – Crossrail II sounds sensible – and to make sure that they are financed privately to minimise the burden on [...]
The hidden costs of low interest rates are hurting the economy April 24, 2014 WE ALL know the dangers of high interest rates: borrowers end up having to fork out more, some people and companies with high amounts of debt will go bust, and the reduced disposable incomes and profits hit economic growth. But a policy of permanently low interest rates comes with its own distortions and risks. UK [...]
City’s long hours signal final death of old aristocratic culture April 23, 2014 DO you remember how the City used to be pre-Big Bang in 1986? Neither do I. But when one talks to those who worked for the old law firms, merchant banks and stockbrokers of the 1960s and 1970s, it is clear that the working practices of the time were as different to today’s as it [...]