RAPID RESPONSES September 25, 2011 Counting the cost Thank you for Tim Worstall’s excellent article criticising the financial transactions tax (FTT). The Institute for International Finance estimates that in the next five years new financial regulations will reduce real gross domestic product by 3.2 per cent, the loss equal to 7.5m jobs across the UK, US, Eurozone and Japan. Germany, [...]
The Fed’s paper plane won’t fly: why the US economy is in need of more than a Twist September 22, 2011 THE markets were hoping for a helicopter drop from the US Federal Reserve this week, a reference to Ben Bernanke’s infamous 2002 speech on how to prevent deflation. What they got was more a paper plane, where the Fed will fly Treasury bonds from the short to the long end of the interest rate curve. [...]
A former banker says saving must begin at school September 22, 2011 I REMEMBER my first foray into high finance. Once a week my banker would travel to see me, take my money and give me a deposit receipt in return. He banked this money so it could be saved, bear interest and grow until I was a big girl. I was nine. Only years later did [...]
No one benefits from a bonfire of the vanities September 22, 2011 WHEN it all ended, they sent children to tug the playing cards from gamblers’ hands and strip closets of their silks. Savonarola’s so-called angels swept away the fine paintings and the antique statues, delivering their loot to the great fire burning in the heart of the city. It was said that Botticelli himself threw pictures [...]
RAPID RESPONSES September 22, 2011 Strong medicine A double-dip is looking ever more likely. We can’t ease back on deficit reduction – the last thing we want to do is scare markets – we should focus instead on money supply. Yes, quantitative easing is a blunt instrument, and there is the risk of inflationary side-effects. But the patient is poorly [...]
Companies don’t pay taxes: we do. A Tobin Tax will cost us far more than it collects September 21, 2011 GLORY be, we are to be saved! As the TUC, President Nicolas Sarkozy, Chancellor Angela Merkel and the European Parliament agree, impose a Financial Transactions Tax (FTT) upon the banks and Europe, or at least the euro, will be saved. The banks shall pay for their errors and kittens will gambol in sunshine once again. [...]
It is always the perfect time to start a business September 21, 2011 WHY would now be a good time to start your own business, when the economy is weak and all around is pessimism? Well the truth is that plenty of great companies were started in downturns. In the depths of the Great Depression in the 1930s, Walt Disney launched his eponymous animation company, now almost the [...]
A lack of leadership is tearing Europe apart September 21, 2011 IN a moment of truth after losing referendums in France, the Netherlands and Ireland, Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, admitted to me that the EU could seem like a conspiracy by political elites against their citizens. Never has that been truer than of the euro crisis, which really is crunch time for Europe. [...]
RAPID RESPONSES September 21, 2011 Boris backs us With the crisis in the Eurozone deepening and world markets shakier than ever, headlines of financial Armageddon are today vying for space with stories of celebrity gossip. It can be tempting for commentators to shoot from the hip during times like these, but we must resist populist, reactionary instincts when trying to [...]
Eject Greece if you want to save the euro from sinking, warns a leading economist September 20, 2011 RATINGS agency Fitch was reported yesterday as predicting that Greece would default but not leave the euro. The reality now is that the kind of long-term solution that will be necessary to save the euro requires a euro of which Greece is not a member. The longer a Greek default and euro exit are delayed [...]