RAPID responses July 15, 2012 Health solutions [Re: Demographic timebomb will force government to downsize, Friday] There are plenty of other healthcare models to explore to avoid the incipient funding crisis. One is the Singapore model of health savings accounts, which provides direct subsidies to the less well-off and catastrophe insurance to pay for huge one-off costs. Another is the [...]
You won’t get better banks if you split one bad regulator into three July 12, 2012 GOOD riddance to the Financial Services Authority (FSA). This inflated docklands quango was supposed to regulate the City, but its 4,000 staff were too busy ticking boxes to see the ticking time-bomb of the banking collapse. Likewise, the FSA failed to take any interest in Libor rigging, despite warnings from City journalists and the Bank [...]
Philanthropy only works when big donors treat charity like investment July 12, 2012 THIS week’s announcement that British venture capitalist Michael Moritz has given £75m to Oxford University is a welcome reminder of the great contribution that many in the financial services industry continue to make to worthy causes, either in public or behind the scenes. Moritz’s gift will support scholarships for the poorest students. In so doing, [...]
Coalition can learn from Lords reform failures of Wilson July 12, 2012 THIS week’s massive backbench rebellion by 91 Conservative MPs was the largest Commons rebellion to have hit the coalition since 2010, the largest rebellion on Lords reform in the post-war era, and the largest rebellion at the second reading of a bill on any issue since 1945. But the most important vote was the one [...]
Is a third runway at Heathrow essential for ensuring the UK’s future economic growth? July 12, 2012 YES Simon Walker Day by day, the clamour for airport expansion in the UK is growing. Recent interventions by the likes of Sir Richard Branson, urging the Government to ditch their “farcical” outright refusal to consider a third runway at Heathrow, are just the latest in a long line of prominent and expert voices to [...]
RAPID RESPONSES July 12, 2012 Firm interference [Re: Supporters of capitalism must help expose blundering firms, yesterday] When you compare corporate wrong-doing with the malfeasance committed by governments, corporate culpability is much smaller than the government’s. Would banks or other financial institutions offer fraudulent schemes if governments did not encourage them to? The problem can be traced to a fundamental [...]
Goldman Sachs: A host of medals might make up for Olympic costs July 11, 2012 HISTORICALLY, the financial reward of hosting the Olympics has been mixed: the 1972 Munich Olympics and the 1976 Montreal Olympics made significant losses, while the Games held in Los Angeles (1984), Barcelona (1992) and Atlanta (1996) each made a profit. Moreover, if you fully account for all of the costs related to the hosting of [...]
Sclerotic jobs figures put the economy off-limits for Obama’s campaign July 11, 2012 THE US economy is still stumbling, creating a severe problem for President Barack Obama’s hopes for re-election in November. In June, the private sector created an abysmal 80,000 new jobs. Unemployment remains high at 8.2 per cent, and there’s little prospect of it dropping any time soon. With 117 days to election day, America’s ongoing [...]
Wikipedia fails to let CEOs defend against vandals July 11, 2012 A TOTAL of 55 of the FTSE 100 chairmen and 53 of their chief executives now have their own Wikipedia pages. Whether they like it or not, Wikipedia is the prism through which the world views them. As the sixth most-visited site on the web, it is one of the key media phenomena of our [...]
Are the coalition’s plans to allow the elderly to defer care costs until death the right step? July 11, 2012 YES Les Mayhew These proposals represent a practical and measured approach to the problem of reforming social care in England. We are pleased that no decision is being made on the lifetime care cost cap (which would put a cap on the amount people would pay for care during their lifetime). We propose a different [...]