Disposing of Royal Bank of Scotland: It’s the only way the chancellor can cut borrowing April 22, 2016 Whilst George Osborne was sipping some Chateau Lynch Bages 2000 as HM Government was entertaining President Obama, he surely must have been ruminating as to how he can get the UK'S borrowing requirement down from the unacceptable level of 83.5 per cent of GDP. He has tried desperately hard in recent years to achieve this goal, [...]
Competition warnings over OnTheMarket were pretty much inevitable April 22, 2016 Anyone with even a passing interest in technology and its history could have predicted this one: just as the Luddites were eventually overwhelmed by power looms, online property portal OnTheMarket was destined to stumble. And lo, yesterday it came to pass: the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) effectively took a sledgehammer to the site’s business [...]
Ignore the scaremongers: Chinese capital flight is no reason to panic April 22, 2016 China's economic growth is decelerating. By our estimation, it has more than halved over the last five years. We believe that this is for the better, but many are fearful that we are on the verge of a crisis. They are pointing to recent capital flight as evidence – emerging market economic crises of the [...]
Inconsistency versus insincerity: Why this US presidential race leaves me utterly miserable April 22, 2016 I know I’m not the only person turned off by politicians’ sound-bites, but I understand why they do it. Thanks to focus groups, A/B testing, and data analysis, campaigns know which words and phrases will have the greatest impact; and repetition works. But the levels of absurdity the current US presidential race has reached should [...]
Confront women with the true horror of the old age poverty they face to tackle our pensions saving crisis April 22, 2016 Women are facing poverty in retirement as they cut back on pension contributions to fund childcare. A report released by The Fawcett Society, which campaigns for women’s rights, found many women are funding childcare out of their own pay packets (not their partners’) – which means stopping pension contributions. It partly responsible for a doubling of [...]
As the chancellor overshoots his 2015-16 borrowing target by £1.8bn, has his deficit reduction plan failed? April 22, 2016 Kallum Pickering, senior UK economist at Berenberg, says Yes. From an economic point of view, the chancellor’s fiscal policy failed a long time ago. In the 2010 Emergency Budget, the first time Osborne cracked the fiscal whip, he said the deficit would be 1.1 per cent of GDP in the 2015-16 fiscal year. Yesterday’s data shows [...]
EU referendum: I’m a fintech startup founder and here’s why I’m against Brexit April 21, 2016 I’m a strong believer in the rule that politics and business don’t mix. However, as the EU referendum draws closer, businesses need to speak out. Leaving the EU would be harmful for UK fintech as it would create more borders, at a time when we need fewer. Without doubt, the world is a much better place when [...]
Treasury report on Brexit: Why the many fiscal faces of chancellor George Osborne could backfire on Remain campaign in EU referendum April 21, 2016 During his time at number 11, George Osborne has presented a number of contradictory fiscal positions. He is of course best known for his austerity rhetoric, so one would think with the ultimate goal to reduce the size and influence of Whitehall. But the reality is that he has consistently failed to meet his deficit reduction [...]
EU referendum: Remain campaign must confront their own risks as they warn against a Brexit April 21, 2016 One of the central criticisms levelled against the Leave campaign is that Brexit would constitute a leap into the unknown. The Remain campaign say that leaving the EU would be too much of a risk – especially since advocates of Leave can’t articulate what Britain’s future would look like outside the EU. What kind of [...]
George Osborne may have made a fatal error by revealing his hand on Brexit April 21, 2016 The general public, together with economists unfamiliar with UK-EU cost-benefit analysis, probably found this week’s Brexit report from the Treasury persuasive, while cautiously acknowledging that they were being “scared”. Treasury economists, who are familiar with the economic arguments, clearly found it persuasive too – they produced it after all – although one must add the [...]