You can’t reform a central bank by changing the faces of its management November 26, 2012 SIR Mervyn King’s replacement as Bank of England governor has finally been announced. But we shouldn’t let our excitement at the appointment of Mark Carney distract us from the severe structural issues that persist beneath the surface. The Bank has recently come under strong scrutiny for the way it handled the financial crisis. Its economic [...]
Press regulation is not the solution to privacy breaches November 26, 2012 THE Leveson Inquiry will make its long-awaited recommendations on Thursday, and the main expectation is that Lord Leveson will propose putting Britain’s press under statutory regulation. But this is a one-way street towards a British media that is afraid to take on the most powerful voices in the land. That is not what civil society [...]
Will the £29.7m fine imposed on UBS by the FSA reduce the risk of future rogue trading? November 26, 2012 YES David McCluskey The extra capital requirements proposed by the Financial Stability Board reflect the global effort to make banks safer post 2008. But to really change the way banks deal with risk, we need a culture where risk management is prioritised and adequately resourced in all financial institutions. The FSA’s enforcement agenda increasingly focuses [...]
Rapid responses November 26, 2012 Bill please [Re: There must be no compromise on our own press freedom, Monday] Brendan O’Neill is right to invoke the spirit of the First Amendment that guarantees freedom of speech – and by extension, freedom of the press. He highlights a gaping hole in our political institutions: we do not have a simplified Bill [...]
EU budget stalemate: The battle is about more than European waste November 25, 2012 THE EU summit in Brussels last week ended the way most people expected: no agreement. The deal on the table from Hermann van Rompuy – president of the European Council – was for a €973bn (£787.5bn) budget over seven years in 2011 prices. It was significantly less than the over €1 trillion budget originally proposed [...]
The City needs partners to strengthen its place in Europe’s single market November 25, 2012 UNCERTAINTY over the future of Europe, and to an extent Britain’s role within it, continues to dominate the agenda, even as the latest summit in Brussels wraps up. Clearly there are strong views on both sides of this debate in the Square Mile. But – regardless of whether you are a eurosceptic, europhile or something [...]
There must be no compromise on our press freedom November 25, 2012 WHEN he made his plea for press freedom in 1644, the poet John Milton said: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” His depiction of press freedom as the greatest thing a man could be granted, standing “above all liberties”, was not poetic melodrama. [...]
Is the government’s new Energy Bill a good deal for British businesses and consumers? November 25, 2012 YES Tim Yeo If we do not find £100bn of investment by 2020, Britain will face an energy crisis. We need to replace polluting coal power plants and construct new nuclear reactors. The government’s Energy Bill will give generators a guaranteed price for clean, low-carbon electricity. This will cut the risk of investing in projects [...]
Rapid responses November 25, 2012 House of cards [Re:Why Britain’s housing market has escaped the disasters of the 1990s, Friday] Although Ruth Lea’s article is interesting, I’m concerned that a similar housing disaster to that of 1990s has simply been postponed by our unnaturally low interest rates. The problem that Britain’s housing market faces is that a huge number of [...]
Why Britain’s housing market has escaped the disasters of the 1990s November 22, 2012 DESPITE economic woes, the British housing market is holding up reasonably well. According to the Office for National Statistics, house prices in September were 1.7 per cent higher than a year earlier in nominal terms, and only 2.5 per cent down on their 2008 peak. Of course, there are qualifications. Higher prices are mainly confined [...]