The grave crises facing Putin’s Russia lay bare its fundamental weaknesses January 28, 2014 CHAOS in Kiev must feel uncomfortably close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Ukrainian parliament yesterday annulled laws that sought to clear the streets of protesters against Ukraine’s increasingly authoritarian pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. Ukraine’s prime minister and government have quit, and the country stands perilously on the edge of deeper conflict – prompted initially [...]
Against the Grain: Facebook’s imminent collapse is possible – but not because it’s a bad product January 28, 2014 SO FAREWELL, then, Facebook! That is the conclusion of a highly technical paper by two Princeton researchers John Cannarella and Joshua Spechler, which received a lot of publicity in the press last week. The authors conclude that “Facebook will undergo a rapid decline in the coming years, losing 80 per cent of its peak user [...]
We’re seeing respectable growth for a New Normal but real risks still remain January 28, 2014 UK ECONOMIC growth is looking up. The 0.7 per cent GDP increase in the fourth quarter of 2013 might not have been as strong as some commentators were expecting, but it means economic activity is up a full 2.8 per cent on a year ago. It’s not as strong as the 3.3 per cent growth [...]
Letters to the Editor – 29/01 – More red tape, Best of Twitter January 28, 2014 More red tape [Re: We’re slashing rules that hold business back while Labour imperils recovery, yesterday] While we applaud Michael Fallon’s success in realising the government’s commitment to slash rules for small firms, readers in the City won’t need to be reminded that financial services are excluded. We understand this is due to the massive [...]
Labour’s 50p tax populism ignores the most important debate of the century January 27, 2014 ED BALLS’S announcement that the 50 per cent top rate of income tax could make a comeback is an act of political opportunism devoid of any economic sense. Opinion polls may show that two-thirds of voters would support such a hike, but satisfying the politics of envy is a dangerous economic game. Raising the top [...]
Emerging markets need a structural overhaul before they can return to favour January 27, 2014 PEOPLE talk about emerging markets as if they were one homogenous group, but nothing could be further from the truth. The only thing that really links Argentina, Turkey and Indonesia is that they all look vulnerable to further volatility in their currency, bond and equity markets. The diversity of the emerging market universe is such [...]
We’re slashing rules that hold business back while Labour imperils recovery January 27, 2014 THE GDP figures released today, expected to show further evidence of economic growth, will tell us how far the recovery has progressed. They follow last week’s employment stats which showed that our long-term plan is beginning to work. We are creating more jobs by backing small business and enterprise with better infrastructure and lower jobs [...]
Letters to the Editor – 28/01 – Labour tax plans, Small business, Best of Twitter January 27, 2014 Labour tax plans [Re: The Labour party’s war on the better off is dreadful economics, yesterday] Let us not forget the damage that the 50p tax rate would do to the global mobility of top talent. Many of these individuals are “tax equalised” – their net salary is delivered, and the employer meets the tax [...]
The Mints are falling apart: It’s time to reassess our view of emerging markets January 26, 2014 TO PARAPHRASE Antony in Julius Caesar, I come to bury the Mints idea, not to praise it. True, as with its Brics ancestor, former Goldman Sachs Asset Management head Jim O’Neill has hit upon something vitally important by identifying Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey as future economic giants. With the Brics, it was that the [...]
Ignore the rhetoric: Government must open up contracts to small business January 26, 2014 TO CREATE more and better-paid jobs, Britain needs more small businesses, and it needs the best of them to scale up. Government has a key role to play, by radically improving its own commercial relationship with small companies. The US and Germany – two of our strongest competitors – are far ahead of the UK [...]