Newt Gingrich is back from the political dead, and only Mitt Romney can stop him January 23, 2012 AS SOON as Newt Gingrich’s landslide win in South Carolina was announced by US networks, two ideas were put forward as gospel. Firstly, that this was an unexpected sensation – and secondly that, due to the vastness and expense of campaigning in the state, such a sensation would be impossible for him to repeat in [...]
Holy moly: Banks were drugged by Basel’s rulebook January 23, 2012 LET’S suppose that the human, fallible credit rating agencies produce ratings that are absolutely perfect in terms of measuring the risk of default; and that banks use these ratings to choose who to lend to, at what rates and under what conditions. But then let us add that bank regulators, such as those in the [...]
Liquidating false ideas of Austrian economics January 23, 2012 IN A recent article in the Daily Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argued that “policy defeatism is in the air, and Austro-liquidationists are winning the popular debate”. “Austro-liquidationists” is a neat slur, managing to damn Austrian economics as both terrifyingly extreme and stupefyingly technical at the same time. But Evans-Pritchard misrepresents the Austrian school, while also overestimating [...]
RAPID RESPONSES January 23, 2012 Not a capital idea [Re: Why a wealth tax is a very bad idea, yesterday] A mansion tax would require a whole new bureaucracy to value property and collect the tax – a very bad idea. More generally, a wealth tax is bad because it destroys capital. Our collective wealth provides the seedcorn for new [...]
New technologies that will allow us to live even longer will pay economic dividends January 22, 2012 THERE is little downside to the wonderful reality that human beings are now living longer than ever before. While many assume that society’s economic burden radically increases with greater longevity, the reality is the opposite. Everyone is better off because of longer life expectancies. For example, in 1850, life expectancy in the United States was [...]
Ratings agencies won’t be trusted without a fight January 22, 2012 THE Big Three rating agencies hardly seem to be out of the news with their ability to move markets. Following Standard & Poor’s (S&P) decision to reduce its assessment of the health of France’s sovereign debt by one notch to AA+ from AAA status, top German politicians like Michael Fuchs and others have jumped on [...]
London’s success is the whole country’s gain January 22, 2012 HAVING just returned to this country after leading a senior City delegation to Turkey, I am currently on an equally important business visit – to six of our own major cities across the United Kingdom. At first glance, it may seem to some that promoting the City in my hometown of Bradford – where I [...]
RAPID RESPONSES January 22, 2012 Informal channels Dionysios Demetis makes a good point [Tracking Money Laundering Matters, Wednesday] – very little terrorist funding goes through the conventional banking system. Most of the cross-border financing is via the hawala or informal money transfer system, especially to and from the Indian sub-continent. The UK authorities are well aware of this but do [...]
In defence of hedge funds: Institutional investors are giving a vote of confidence January 19, 2012 THE latest hedge fund performance figures show the average fund was down nearly 5 per cent in 2011, and have prompted some to say: “The hedge fund model is broken”. It is worth noting that global shares, according to the MSCI All-Country World Index, were down 9.4 per cent in 2011, but nobody is arguing [...]
Law firms jump the fences in a quest for capital January 19, 2012 EARLIER this week, law firm Irwin Mitchell hired Glyn Barker as its chairman designate. Barker, a 30-year veteran of PwC, built the accountancy giant’s private equity practice and was its vice chairman until the end of last month. In the corporate world, cross-hiring between industries is common – take Chris Grigg’s sideways jump from Barclays [...]