Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya… Is it time to intervene in Syria? February 8, 2012 YES MICHAEL WEISS THE question is not whether or not the West ought to intervene in Syria but when it will. For 11 months, President Assad’s regime has rejected all offers for substantive reform, while massacring upwards of 7,000 civilians, displacing tens of thousands more and running a network of arbitrary detention facilities rivalling Saddamist [...]
Bank accounts should become a rite of passage February 8, 2012 FINANCIAL education should be made a compulsory part of every school’s curriculum – that was the motion Justin Tomlinson MP put forward in Parliament just before Christmas. Tomlinson pointed out that debit card usage now exceeds cash usage. Yet about 19 per cent of parents have never discussed how to spend money with their teenagers [...]
Both sides do battle in war for independents February 8, 2012 THE president of the United States, according to the late Clinton Rossiter, is America’s “Manager of Prosperity”. Presidents sink or swim on their economic records. When the economy booms, $15 trillion in activity can – no matter how absurd – be attributed to the astute management of one man. The same is obviously true in [...]
RAPID RESPONSES February 8, 2012 A British disease Simon Denham is right in many of his observations [Politicians are slaughtering UK finance – the goose that is still laying the golden egg, Monday], particularly the way politicians are keen to jump on any current popular issue, banker-bashing at present, and will happily destroy the income that is feeding them in [...]
The Eurozone is almost out of options – taxpayers must prepare to take their losses February 7, 2012 OVER the last few weeks, negotiations over a potential write-down of Greece’s debt have taken us here and there, and back again – and at the time of writing, they remain unresolved. But whatever the outcome of the talks between the Greek government and its creditors, let’s not forget the bigger picture – ultimately, the [...]
The EU’s war on planes leaves UK trade grounded February 7, 2012 WE ARE witnessing the opening skirmishes of a trade war between the EU and the rest of the world. This is unnecessary, costly for the European economy, and self-defeating. How did we get here? Under European law, an airline (wherever based) which operates flights that take off or land in the EU must, from next [...]
More laws won’t make markets more efficient February 7, 2012 THE “clean government” bill bans American politicians from using their inside information for personal profit, for example, by trading securities. It passed the Senate last week by a vote of 96 to 3. Which is a pity. Prohibitions on insider trading should not be extended; they should be repealed, not only in America but everywhere. [...]
RAPID RESPONSES February 7, 2012 Fair play on funds Regarding the True & Fair campaign [Join our campaign to fight fund managers’ high fees and lack of transparency, last Wednesday]. I’m all in favour of lower fees and more disclosure on costs. When choosing pension funds at the moment investors are told how much future income would be provided under [...]
Britain must become a land of opportunity once more to attract the world’s workers February 6, 2012 COUNTRIES receive the immigrants they deserve. A migrant has 192 countries to choose from. He or she will choose according to his own preferences and reasons. The possibility of economic betterment is the most important: nobody aspires to end up on the breadline. What forms of economic betterment are available will determine what sorts of [...]
We must resist a tax that isn’t FTT for purpose February 6, 2012 AS THE European Parliament held its public hearing on the proposed financial transaction tax (FTT) on Monday, the battle positions were clearly drawn. For the Eurozone, an FTT represents a smallish subsidy to repair damaged national balance sheets; for the UK, the adoption of an FTT would represent a massive drag on the country’s economic [...]