Ringfencing is the wrong solution to the wrong problem February 4, 2013 IT is hard to know where to start with George Osborne’s latest rhetorically fiery foray into bank regulation. The vast majority of it was a rehash of previous announcements, a restatement of already existing aspirations. As usual, some of his ideas were excellent and others awful. It will now take just a week to change [...]
Recession and higher tax taking toll on Britain’s top earners February 3, 2013 The rich are getting poorer. Yes, you read that right. The top one per cent of income taxpayers – an individual needs to earn £150,000 per year to qualify – will account for 11.7 per cent of total taxable income this year, down from 12.2 per cent in 2011-12. Their income share peaked at 13.9 [...]
Seven reasons to like the plc model of company ownership January 31, 2013 BACK in the 1980s, when the cult of the equity was at its peak, nobody had a bad word to say about listed companies. Three decades later, scandals and poor stock market performance have badly damaged their reputation, January’s FTSE 100 bounce notwithstanding. Many now prefer private equity. I was tasked by the Chartered Institute [...]
Flawed government policy is wiping out struggling savers January 30, 2013 ONE of the government’s daftest policies is its underpinning of bank lending, a nationalisation of credit in all but name. The biggest losers from the funding for lending scheme have been savers. The effective average savings rate for new deposits has collapsed from 2.75 per cent in September to a miserable 2.11 per cent in [...]
Labour now the firm favourite to triumph in 2015 elections January 29, 2013 YESTERDAY’S vote in Parliament killing off constituency reform will probably be remembered as the moment the Labour party won the next election. The issue is that the size of constituencies varies drastically. Because the Tories tend to get votes in large constituencies, while Labour is ahead in smaller ones, David Cameron’s party will need an [...]
Zombie firms, tax hikes and HS2 all dragging the UK down January 28, 2013 THERE is much that the coalition has done that is helping the economy. Its reforms to education and welfare will, over time, improve the workforce’s skills and reduce the number of people trapped in dependency. Cutting the top rate of tax, which kicks in in April, and the increases to the personal allowance, which have [...]
The state is still growing – this isn’t the right kind of austerity January 27, 2013 IF we want to identify a problem correctly, it is vital to get the facts right. The economy is doing poorly: the official statistics suggest it shrank by 0.3 per cent in the last three months of last year; even when one excludes the oil and gas sector, growth was feeble in 2012. We also [...]
Why you should take economic statistics with a bucket of salt January 24, 2013 TODAY is GDP day, when the Office for National Statistics releases its first, early and ultra-preliminary estimate of the growth of the UK economy. As ever, the media, the markets and the political classes will massively over-react to whatever gross domestic product (GDP) number is released, good or bad. I would urge everybody not to [...]
Cameron’s decision to call a referendum is absolutely right January 23, 2013 GOOD on David Cameron. He has finally listened to public opinion and agreed to seek a better, renegotiated EU membership deal for the UK. Nobody born after 1957 in the UK has ever had a chance to say what they think of an organisation that controls more of UK public policy than ever before. Of [...]
Desperate Osborne risks fuelling another housing bubble January 22, 2013 It is starting to look as if George Osborne is going to blow another housing bubble, albeit this time of a more modest variety. His Funding for Lending Scheme is starting to have an effect; but instead of making it easier and cheaper for small firms to borrow money, the subsidy’s supposed intention, the scheme [...]