Dubai is opening a massive new airport. So why can’t we? September 19, 2013 BRITAIN’S inability to expand our airport capacity is inevitably met with complete bafflement in other, more ambitious parts of the world. In the nineteenth century, the naval trade allowed London to grow into a great, global metropolis; in the 21st century, planes have replaced boats as an essential driver of business travel, tourism and growth. [...]
Sorry, investors, but Ben Bernanke has got it totally wrong September 18, 2013 FOR the junkies in the markets, the shock news that the Fed’s monetary methadone will continue to flow freely was greeted with jubilation last night. Never mind that QE will only continue at this rate for another few months, and that the delay to tapering was caused by worsening economic growth forecasts, combined with fiscal [...]
We must help poor kids – not subsidise middle class parents September 17, 2013 Sometimes I despair at this government’s inconsistencies, internal contradictions and intellectual incoherence. It keeps telling us that it wants to save money to reduce the deficit, and then splashes out £600m on a new entitlement in the form of free school meals for all under-8s. Poor children are already eligible for free school meals, which [...]
Barack Obama should make Donald Kohn the next Fed chief September 16, 2013 IT WAS pretty sickening, to say the least, to see so many investors cheer the prospect of even easier US monetary policy yesterday. The news that Larry Summers was pulling out of the race to be the next Fed chairman led to a boomlet across a slew of asset classes, bolstering emerging markets in particular. [...]
Lehman crisis should have changed the world more than it did September 15, 2013 FIVE years ago, like every Sunday night, I was in the City A.M. newsroom, supervising the production of the newspaper. Traditionally, Sundays are a quieter day for business news: while there’s always lots to write about, there are few on-diary corporate announcements. Not that Sunday. It was the most manic day any business journalist can [...]
Twitter’s float reminds us why we must privatise the Royal Mail September 12, 2013 COUNT on Twitter, that most modern of communication companies, to steal the thunder of the Royal Mail, an organisation founded by Henry VIII and now aiming to reinvent itself as a privatised, modern parcel delivery firm. For most of yesterday, the Royal Mail was the big story: the coalition confirmed the firm would be sold [...]
Real estate jobs boom a worry – but labour market rebalancing September 11, 2013 IT is the fact of the day: those who work in real estate accounted for 23.05 per cent of the net jobs growth in the UK over the past year. In fact, 13 per cent of the 562,000 total jobs that now exist in “real estate activities” – which include a range of jobs, from [...]
What Tesco’s US debacle tells us about the wisdom of markets September 10, 2013 EVER since the nineteenth century, the leaders of businesses quoted on the stock exchange have bemoaned investors’ supposedly fickle nature, inability to understand their firms, general competence, and more recently, their relative youth and inexperience. So when back in 2010, Sir Terry Leahy, Tesco’s then boss, complained that fund managers were too risk averse and [...]
Osborne has defeated Ed Balls – but UK’s economy still fragile September 9, 2013 WITH the economy finally growing much more quickly, it is no surprise that the chancellor chose yesterday to show off about it. He is certainly right to be celebrating having seen off Labour’s Ed Balls, whose strident opposition to modest cuts and claims they would inflict permanent havoc are no longer credible. Osborne is also [...]
Scrap the licence fee – and drag British TV into 21st century September 8, 2013 THERE is a simple solution to the scandal that is currently engulfing the BBC, centering around the size and scope of payoffs to former staff and the implication that public money was squandered. The answer is to reform the way the BBC is funded, and to allow it to spend its own money hiring and [...]