Boris urges developers to stop offering London homes to foreigners first March 11, 2014 Boris Johnson will urge developers and investors this afternoon to sign up to a new deal to stop giving buyers living abroad the first chance to buy London homes sold before they’re built, in a bid to get more Londoners onto the housing ladder. Speaking at Mipim, the property’s industry annual conference in Cannes, the [...]
What you need to know before the US open March 11, 2014 With little in the way of economic data today, futures suggest US markets will open down, tracking European counterparts, which were trading lower this morning, Over in Asia, the Nikkei rose in Tuesday trading, as the Bank of Japan maintained its huge monetary stimulus programme. And the OECD has said that the slowing of [...]
Why the Bank of England needs to stop deleting historical records March 11, 2014 A policy of deleting historical records at the Bank of England has come under fire, as individuals voice concerns about the implication for transparency. The tapes of policy setting meetings are routinely deleted – the transcripts destroyed once minutes are agreed upon. Today, Treasury Select Committee chairman Andrew Tyrie has asked for the Bank of [...]
Bank of England divided over economic slack March 11, 2014 Having made spare capacity a focus, Bank of England governor Mark Carney is now having to deal with disagreements over how people gauge the amount of slack in the UK's economy. While Carney said in February that spare capacity might be around one to 1.5 per cent in the labour market, he now believes that [...]
UK manufacturing output beats estimates March 11, 2014 Not too punchy a figure, but better than had been expected. UK manufacturing production rose by 0.4 per cent in Janaury, say the economists at the Office for National Statistics. That's slightly higher than an anticipated 0.3 per cent rise. Rob Wood, chief UK economist at Berenberg, says that's the strongest annual growth in around [...]
Why you’ll never see the Bank of England’s meeting transcripts March 3, 2014 The excellent Tony Yates recently asked why the Bank didn't produce transcripts, suggesting that minutes were taken, but verbatim word-for-word accounts were not kept. The US Federal Reserve recently released the transcripts from their 2008 meetings, providing some valuable insights into the crucial decisions made during the financial crisis. Yates makes some worrying [...]
Lloyds is the real driver behind the mortgage boom February 27, 2014 Britain’s housing market is booming, with mortgage lending soaring and prices rising at giddy, pre-crash rates. But not everyone is taking part – of Britain’s biggest four banks, two cut gross new mortgage lending last year, and one barely budged on the year. In fact, the boom in lending is almost all coming from Lloyds. [...]
Charts: Man Utd stars are playing 18 per cent worse under David Moyes February 27, 2014 Manchester United’s season is littered with statistics to make even ashen-faced manager David Moyes grimace, but these may be the most damning yet. A comparison of how players have performed relative to last season, using Kickdex, shows that United’s first-team regulars are on average 18 per cent less effective under Moyes than they were in [...]
Yellen: Fed “does not have authority to supervise or regulate Bitcoin in any way” February 27, 2014 Fans of Bitcoin may be suffering from some mixed feelings. Many love the cryptocurrency as unlike fiat money, such as the US dollar, it has no central bank. But the world's most important central banker, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, just gave the currency a great boost. During questions Yellen has just ruled out the [...]
How one woman became Glasgow’s 87th most popular attraction February 27, 2014 We expect that Mary Johnston was just intending to leave a few comments on holiday destinations, but she's now become one herself. Johnston has signed herself up on TripAdvisor as an attraction, and is now Glasgow's 87th most popular of the 163 on the travel review site. Her profile invites you to answer: "Have you [...]
