Why it’s time to stop feeding our addiction to ultra loose monetary policy January 20, 2014 WITH GDP still 2 per cent below its pre-crisis peak and consumer price index inflation falling back to its 2 per cent target, many argue that Britain should stick with extraordinarily loose monetary policy for longer. Just yesterday, the EY Item club urged the Bank of England to bolster its forward guidance policy, and to [...]
Migrant benefit reform: Doing the right thing for all of the wrong reasons January 20, 2014 YESTERDAY saw the government announce the latest in a line of restrictions on the benefits immigrants can claim. New jobless EU migrants will be denied access to housing benefit from April, and will only be able to claim Jobseeker’s Allowance for six months unless they have a “genuine” chance of work. This comes on top [...]
Letters to the Editor – 21/01 – EU reform, Heathrow debate, Best of Twitter January 20, 2014 EU reform [Re: EU reform is possible – and it can safeguard the position of the City of London, yesterday] Mark Boleat is too quick to praise a “reformist agenda” without considering the alternatives. We should not dismiss leaving the EU based on the results of a CBI survey of just 406 businesses across the [...]
More competition would be good but Miliband is proposing little that’s new January 19, 2014 ED MILIBAND appears to be in the process of reinventing the Labour Party as the consumer party. His central theme is the “cost of living crisis”. He tells us how he is on the side of consumers in gas and electricity, freezing prices, in banks forcing competition, and in general by having consumer bodies report [...]
City Matters: EU reform is possible – and it can safeguard the position of the City of London January 19, 2014 GEORGE Osborne has made it his New Year’s resolution to reform the European Union to reverse the continent’s economic decline. His remarks, made in a speech last week, highlight the high stakes in Britain’s membership debate, and he is fundamentally correct in his assertion that “it is in no-one’s interests for Britain to come to [...]
UK companies will suffer if we remain complacent on electronic spy reform January 19, 2014 FOR THOSE who say reform of surveillance law isn’t needed, Barack Obama’s speech on Friday, in which he outlined plans to reshape the National Security Agency’s (NSA) electronic spying practices, should have come as a wake-up call. While Obama made few specific proposals, and touched on just a handful of the 46 recommendations made by [...]
Letters to the Editor – 20/01 – Bank competition, Heathrow noise, Best of Twitter January 19, 2014 Bank competition [Re: Banking competition is already fierce – but technology will intensify it further, Thursday] Competition is hardly “fierce” in British banking. America has 7,000 banks: we have five, controlling four-fifths of the market. Even supermarket banks use their systems. Splitting them, and the introduction of new technology, will help. But regulation remains a [...]
UK banks risk financial meltdown if the long-term IT crisis remains unresolved January 16, 2014 ON THE busiest online shopping day of 2013, Cyber Monday, RBS faced an embarrassing IT system outage that left more than 1m customers unable to access their accounts for three hours. This wasn’t the first time. In 2012, an IT meltdown at RBS and its subsidiaries locked 17m customers out of their accounts for days, [...]
The Long View: Our digital technologies prove that freedom is more than just a rallying cry January 16, 2014 FREEDOM isn’t just a rallying call, it is a practical way to transform the world for the better. Letting people make their own choices scorns the arrogance of narrow elites, preferring instead the riches found in every individual’s contribution. That seismic shift opens huge, untapped reserves of human potential. And since it starts by recognising [...]
Letters to the Editor – 17/01 – Readers respond to our criticism of France’s failed socialist experiment January 16, 2014 Although I now live in China, I worked in France for 26 years, and have a lot of affection for the country and its people. Like Allister Heath, I feel sad to see the country going down the drain because it cannot rid itself of socialist dogma. The problem is that France is paralysed by [...]