Central bankers aren’t to blame for the crisis January 2, 2012 THE conventional story of the credit crunch is that following the dot-com boom the US Federal Reserve cut interest rates, creating an inflationary debt-fuelled boom that manifested itself in housing. But is the Fed to blame? US economists Jeffrey R. Hummel and David Henderson prompted controversy by lending support to Ben Bernanke’s theory of a [...]
RAPID RESPONSES January 2, 2012 Frozen liquidity Peter Warburton’s call for the reintroduction of the Bank of England’s Special Liquidity Scheme [A wholesale improvement, 22 December] will not solve the problem. This is because his argument does not look at the micro-issues affecting the macro. Simply put, the main problem is the FSA’s implemented liquidity requirements soak up a lot [...]
Test your wits with our quiz December 22, 2011 1. In a Which? magazine blind taste test of champagnes by experienced champagne tasters, Moet & Chandon’s Brut NV, priced at £30.99, received a score of 74%. But which of the following champagnes received the highest score of 85%? a. Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label Brut NV (£34.49) b. Lanson Black Label (£31.99) c. Morrisons Brut [...]
In dark days let Christmas spirit shine in the City December 22, 2011 JOYFUL and triumphant” are not the most appropriate words to describe the City at the end of 2011. It feels more like being “in the bleak mid-winter”. Yet the Christmas story is one that still inspires. It can lift us from the “woes of sin and strife”, dispel “the mighty dread” and renew a sense [...]
RAPID RESPONSES December 22, 2011 HMV fills a gap [Re: HMV’s last stand has new toys but not much future, Tuesday] The sale of CDs is engrained in the HMV brand and it has not moved on from this and did not move quickly enough to embrace the download age. Its HMVDigital website does not feel user-friendly and is somewhat [...]
A wholesale improvement is the only way for UK banks to weather the Eurozone storm December 21, 2011 FOR the past fifteen months, the Bank of England (BoE) has been backpedalling. Instead of coasting, the UK economy has stalled. The government’s bold and sensible plans for budget deficit reduction are broadly on track for the next few months, but will not remain so unless the central bank shapes up to the challenge of [...]
Much racism has been booted out but don’t give up December 21, 2011 AS FOOTBALL settles down to the news that two of its stars are being disciplined over racist epithets hurled on the field of play, it could seem like a return to the bad old days, when clear racism was a regrettably commonplace part of the game. The decision by an independent regulatory commission of the [...]
Banking reform should rule out more bailouts December 21, 2011 THE rescue of Northern Rock, and the subsequent injections of taxpayers’ money into RBS and the forced merger of HBOS and Lloyds, stemmed from a clear failure of Ed Balls and Labour’s tripartite regulatory structure for financial services. And when a Liberal Democrat trade secretary and a Conservative chancellor came together to try to agree [...]
RAPID RESPONSES December 21, 2011 Move on accounts Surveys demonstrate that individuals and small businesses alike are often dissatisfied with their bank, and yet they are still overwhelmingly unlikely to change provider. Genuine account portability would radically improve matters. Sir John Vickers has called for the formation by September 2013 of a free current account redirection service, that allows the [...]
This Christmas, let’s all lift a glass to mark the birth of Homo sapiens urbanus December 20, 2011 MORE than half the world’s population now lives in cities. And with 1m people every week migrating to emerging cities, all developing regions, including Africa, are expected to have more people living in urban than rural areas by 2030. Across the planet, Homo sapiens will have become Homo sapiens urbanus. In this, the largest migration [...]