We’ve neglected the Commonwealth and Britain’s prosperity has suffered December 10, 2013 AN IMPORTANT feature of the modern Commonwealth has become worryingly obscured in UK debates about its significance: intra-Commonwealth trade and investment flows between its 53 member states (about a third of the world’s population) are growing at a huge pace. Far from being a relic of Britain’s imperial past, today’s Commonwealth connects at least half [...]
Against the Grain: Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs and the economics behind the Top One Per Cent December 10, 2013 BORIS Johnson has got into trouble for his provocative argument that it is “surely relevant to a conversation about equality” that just 2 per cent of “our species” has an IQ over 130. Over the past couple of years, the Occupy movement has made the headlines by attacking the top 1 per cent, criticising a [...]
Forget a Bitcoin bubble: A wider crypto revolt is challenging everything December 10, 2013 FOR ALL the talk of a Bitcoin bubble, it’s easy to miss the real significance of what is currently happening. The rise of Bitcoin is just the beginning. Cryptocurrencies are no longer the domain of activists and grassroots movements, they are nothing less than “new money”. Many are waiting for the moment when a central [...]
Letters to the Editor – 11/12 – Encrypted lives, Best of Twitter December 10, 2013 Encrypted lives [Re: The tech giants are right: We could be sleepwalking into a surveillance state, yesterday] The author is right to highlight the growing discontent with government surveillance. But it should be noted that possible solutions to concerns over privacy are cropping up in the private sector. Microsoft announced last week that it will [...]
The tech giants are right: We could be sleepwalking into a surveillance state December 9, 2013 THE CHIEF executives of eight of the biggest businesses in the world sent a clear message to global leaders yesterday: as far as surveillance laws are concerned, the status quo is not an option. It is hardly a common occurrence that AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo agree on something, let alone write [...]
The real reason the chancellor should not let the OBR audit party manifestos December 9, 2013 IT HAS been a tough week for Ed Balls. Many within Labour are said to be questioning his position as shadow chancellor following his disastrous response to George Osborne’s Autumn Statement. While Balls claims he “couldn’t give a toss” about the speculation, he needs to repair his party’s economic credibility, and fast. That’s one reason [...]
Why the 50-year bull market may end with a whimper not a bang December 9, 2013 MY NEXT Gresham professorial lecture has the provocative title “Was Karl Marx always wrong?”, but those wanting a detailed dissection of Marxism should stay away. Rather, I used this to highlight one of the important phenomena of our times – the falling share of labour incomes of GDP. The fall has meant a growing share [...]
Letters to the Editor – 10/12 – SME support, Savings crisis, Best of Twitter December 9, 2013 SME support [Re: Autumn Statement 2013: What it means for UK entrepreneurs, yesterday] Philip Salter’s points are well made – the chancellor’s initiatives are far too little and far too late to make much of a difference. While action on business rates was a step in the right direction, for example, they are still in urgent need of [...]
Bank timidity over interest rate rises risks a destabilising build-up in debt December 8, 2013 THE BANK of England’s revised mandate may push the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to leave interest rates on hold for too long, complicating efforts to bring down inflation and household debt to more prudent levels. Key to the timing of interest rate rises will be unemployment, since the Bank is highly unlikely to hike rates [...]
City Matters: It’s time for financial results to reflect the new face of post-crisis business December 8, 2013 ONE OF the charges that has often been laid against the City in recent years is that it has been too focused on short-term value. Many things have changed as a result of the crash, and one of them has been an increased awareness that the way companies currently report results is not fit for [...]