5 questions you should be asking prospective employers August 27, 2014 You may be coolly and calmly considering a job offer – or choosing objectively between several, if you’re lucky. Or you may have already bitten their hand off, accepted the offer and now are counting down the days before you begin and the first payday because you have blown this month’s salary in anticipation… Either [...]
Asset price distortion: Central banks’ new philosophy comes with old risks August 26, 2014 PRIOR to the financial crisis, life was relatively straightforward for central bankers. They favoured opacity over their future actions, using the theoretical argument that transparency was a threat to credibility. And they refused to control asset prices for a number of reasons – the most compelling of which was the threat of moral hazard. Yet [...]
Alex Salmond’s independence fairytale won’t serve Scottish voters well August 26, 2014 SIR JAMES Mirrlees is one of the mere handful of British recipients of the Nobel Prize in economics. And as his fine old Scottish surname might suggest, he has been active in the debate on independence. His latest intervention, which has attracted considerable publicity, is to pronounce that an independent Scotland should be willing to [...]
Boris is wrong: We should not subvert the rule of law to fight the terrorist threat August 26, 2014 IN A typically verbose article for the Daily Telegraph, the mayor of London Boris Johnson has warned of the “tide of terror” that will “eventually lap at our front door” if something isn’t done to curb the advance of the Islamic State (IS) in the Middle East. But while Johnson is right that we should [...]
As President Hollande purges leftist rebels, can his reform plans revive the French economy? August 26, 2014 Yannick Naud, portfolio manager at Sturgeon Capital, says Yes. The forced Cabinet overhaul and dismissal of three top ministers underlines the political crisis facing President Francois Hollande, as he seeks to balance pressure to reduce France’s budget deficit with domestic demands to revive a stalled economy. France can’t afford to wait any longer and should [...]
The West’s critical analytical flaw that spawned 80 years of Mid East failure August 25, 2014 Once again in Iraq – like some diabolical version of Bill Murray’s predicament in the peerless Groundhog Day – Western countries are arming the locals, with the US launching air strikes to stabilise a situation unhinged at least in part by our own doing. And yet we are surprised. Why does this keep happening? Simply [...]
City Matters: London’s schools have improved dramatically – but more can still be done August 25, 2014 Two things tend to happen without fail at this time of year: the holiday season draws to a close – and young people everywhere receive their much anticipated exam results. Exam results and qualifications are a key rite of passage, and all City A.M. readers can be impressed by what London’s young people are achieving. [...]
We have far more time for leisure than our parents – so why are we so stressed? August 25, 2014 It seems a common refrain that modern life is busier and more hectic than ever – and this can feel especially true on the first day back at work after a Bank Holiday. But the hard data tells a different story. The work week has fallen significantly across industrial countries over the last 40 years. [...]
Jeremy Hunt should scrap plain cigarette packaging August 25, 2014 After Australia passed a first-of-its-kind law in 2012 mandating that all cigarettes be sold in plain brown packaging free of branding, UK health secretary Jeremy Hunt vowed to keep a close eye on the Australian law’s progress before introducing similar legislation in the UK. Two years later, the Australian bill has failed to reduce smoking, [...]
Reviewed – From crisis to confidence: Macroeconomics after the crash August 25, 2014 The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) recently released a monograph by Roger Koppl about the Great Recession (and the theory of recessions and recoveries more generally). Titled From Crisis to Confidence, the wide-ranging document goes through the intellectual history of macroeconomics, discusses modern theories, contrasts Keynesianism and the Austrians, and integrates theory of big players [...]