The euro rollercoaster isn’t over: The new plan to save it is a complete non-starter September 26, 2011 THERE was quite a bit of excitement in the media and financial markets over the weekend. The hot news was that Eurozone leaders, on the sidelines of the G20 summit, forged a new grand scheme to save the embattled euro. The plan, we were told by some, would be announced “within days”. Alas, details are [...]
Red Ed needs the speech of his life to survive today September 26, 2011 IT IS RARE that a party leader of just twelve months standing is faced with making a speech that is considered to be make-or-break for his future prospects. But that is exactly the position facing Ed Miliband as he delivers his Labour conference speech in Liverpool today. A strong summer performance on phone hacking cannot [...]
Creating the right jobs is harder than it looks September 26, 2011 BARACK Obama realises that the key to keeping his own job is to start creating them for other people. The US unemployment figures are high (above 9 per cent), sustained (the recession officially ended almost two years ago), and deepening (half of the unemployed have been out of work for more than 6 months). His [...]
RAPID RESPONSES September 26, 2011 Rating the OBR Dagong Global Credit cut the UK’s credit rating in May. The cut came with a revision of the UK’s growth forecast to 1.3-1.5 per cent this year, rather than the 1.7 per cent predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility. The IMF just revised its UK growth forecast to 1.1 per cent, [...]
The cuts are a convenient lie for the whole political class: City A.M. does the maths September 25, 2011 BY THE TIME you finish this article, the UK’s central government will have spent around a million pounds. It is quite possible that it will have spent even more. Sounds incredible, yes? But last month, and every month this year, that is precisely what happened. For each minute that passed in August, the UK’s central [...]
A chance to build Britain’s answer to Luxembourg September 25, 2011 IT IS clear that one of the things the UK needs most right now is new jobs. Real, private sector jobs. And above all in the regions away from the southeast of England. This month, the ONS has reported the largest increase in unemployment in nearly two years, as the number of people unemployed in [...]
Don’t let the Eurozone split the single market September 25, 2011 Being a part of the developing European single market has provided huge benefits to the UK, both in terms of removing barriers to European trade and in helping the UK to compete in the global marketplace as part of a significant trading bloc that can go toe-to-toe with the US and the emerging Asian superpowers. [...]
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 [...]