CAR TALK January 24, 2012 NEW SLK 55 AMG TO SET YOU BACK UNDER £55,000 Mercedes–Benz has announced prices for its powerful SLK 55 AMG. The top of the line AMG model has a new 5.5-litre V8 engine good for 421bhp which can propel the car from 0-62mph in 4.6 seconds. The car produces 30 per cent less emissions and [...]
There is more to Rioja than wine (although that would be plenty) January 24, 2012 PRINCE Charles surely wouldn’t approve. In the dell of Villabuena de Alava, a sleepy, sloping village squatting among the vineyards of Spain’s Rioja Alavesa region, sits the jagged, unruly modernism of Hotel Viura. It is one of those “impossible” buildings, an optical illusion that seems to squeeze in more angles, surfaces and textures than logic [...]
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 [...]
BRUSSELS IN NEW ATTACK ON BANK PAY January 23, 2012 BRUSSELS could make its ultra-strict rulebook on bankers’ pay even harsher, commissioner Michel Barnier said yesterday during a visit to the City. The ideas under consideration include forcing lenders to set a maximum ratio between their most and least highly pay staff and requiring bankers’ fixed base salaries to account for a minimum amount of [...]
Cable’s plan for clawbacks and tougher votes on director pay January 23, 2012 SHAREHOLDERS will be given binding votes on executive directors’ pay as part of coalition plans to reform the corporate landscape. Business secretary Vince Cable, left, said he also wants to make it easier for companies to claw back money from directors if poor performance subsequently emerges. But he dropped plans for workers’ representatives to sit [...]
Nadir stole £150m and fled to Cyprus, court told January 23, 2012 ASIL Nadir, the Turkish Cypriot tycoon, stole £150m from his own company more than 20 years ago, a court heard yesterday. Nadir switched £146m and $6.4m (now £4.1m) from his Polly Peck International empire to a bank he owned in Northern Cyprus before fleeing the country, the Old Bailey was told. The businessman, now 70, [...]
Lords block welfare bill January 23, 2012 THE GOVERNMENT has suffered a further defeat over its welfare reform proposals after peers backed a move to exclude child benefits from the £26,000 annual cap on benefits paid to families. The House of Lords voted by 252 to 237 last night in favour of the amendment introduced by the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, [...]
