China is, isn’t and may not be the world’s number one July 9, 2015 Until the late nineteenth century, China was the world’s largest economy. It lost that status roughly 150 years after the industrial revolution began in the West. After the Chinese economic revolution of recent decades, it is taken as axiomatic that the crown and mantle of the world’s largest economy will return to Beijing – as [...]
As it presents reform plans, is Greece’s position in the Eurozone untenable without debt relief? July 9, 2015 Konstantinos Venetis is an economist at Lombard Street Research, says Yes Greece’s position has been untenable without debt relief for a number of years, but for a time that debt relief was forthcoming. Debt restructuring has already reduced the value of Greek debt in net present value (NPV) terms. This process could go further, with [...]
July Budget 2015: George Osborne embraced political cunning at the expense of economic prudence July 8, 2015 On the one hand, this was the first fully Conservative Budget in nearly two decades. On the other hand, it is effectively George Osborne’s third Budget in just eight months. He has become a master magician at the politics of presentation. Almost every sentence was crafted to confound and confuse the Labour opposition or to [...]
The 2015 July Budget did far too little to reform Britain’s highly damaging taxes on banks July 8, 2015 I've been taken aback in recent months by the number of international bank executives who have been telling me just how damaging the UK’s bank taxation policies are. The global banks constantly review where they base their business around the world. They carry out detailed cost-benefit analyses in pounds and pence, or dollars and cents, [...]
How the chancellor used his new-found luck: Easing the squeeze on public services July 8, 2015 GEORGE Osborne has not, up to now, been a very lucky chancellor. He inherited a huge fiscal deficit and has presided over a recovery that, in the early years, repeatedly disappointed. Initial plans to eliminate the deficit over the life of the last Parliament morphed, year by year, into plans to halve the deficit over [...]
July Budget 2015: Will George Osborne’s new national living wage hit the number of people in work? July 8, 2015 Sam Bowman, deputy director of the Adam Smith Institute, says Yes. There is lots of research into what the minimum wage does to jobs. Of the 103 papers reviewed by economists David Neumark and William Wascher in a 2006 study, most of them showed that raising the minimum wage reduces long-term employment. Of the 33 [...]
Budget for a greater Britain: What the City needs from the chancellor July 7, 2015 Amid the deluge of news about EU reform and the Greek debt crisis, you could be forgiven for forgetting there’s a Budget today. But that would be to overlook an opportunity for the City. This is George Osborne’s first Budget since the Conservatives were elected to govern alone and we’ll get a clear sense of [...]
UK bank deposit guarantees: High finance and the market for lemons July 7, 2015 One aspect of the Eurozone crisis which will affect many readers is the reduction in the amount of cash in a UK bank deposit which is protected. As a consequence of the decline in the value of the euro against the pound, the Bank of England announced that the current guaranteed amount of £85,000 will [...]
July Budget 2015: Liberalised shopping on Sundays will deliver big benefits to the consumer July 7, 2015 The liberalisation of Sunday trading hours, expected to be announced in the Budget today, is a timely response to the way in which Sundays have changed in the 21 years since shopping hours were last reformed in 1994. Sundays remain a day of leisure for most of us, and our leisure time is enriched by [...]
Will the ongoing Greek crisis have a positive impact on Britain’s renegotiation with the EU? July 7, 2015 Brian Monteith, communications director of Global Britain, says Yes David Cameron could not be in a stronger position in pushing for major EU reforms that retain our trading links but decouple the political interference in our everyday laws; remove the price-fixing and subsidies for energy and food producers that cost every family nearly a £1,000 [...]