This irrational tech boom risks the health of the global economy May 8, 2014 THE PENNY seems to be slowly dropping. Investors have taken fright at how they have driven up the value of the tech sector. A range of big name tech firms have suffered sharp falls in share prices. Twitter is down over 40 per cent over the last three months. Facebook has fallen by 11 per [...]
Our real crisis is government silencing the sound and fury of capitalism May 8, 2014 THE STRATEGY is set for the general election on 7 May next year. Expect 12 more months of Labour banging on about the cost of living crisis, and a year of the Conservatives talking up the long-term economic plan. If only they weren’t both wrong. Yes, the Conservatives can justifiably point out the country’s return [...]
Why the government doesn’t need to protect Astrazeneca May 8, 2014 PFIZER’S bid for Astrazeneca is the biggest potential foreign takeover of a UK company ever, and the most controversial since Kraft’s successful acquisition of Cadbury in 2010. Politicians and much of the scientific establishment have called for the public interest test for takeovers – which now only permits the government to intervene when national security, [...]
How executive pay regulations can increase inequality – not reduce it May 7, 2014 IN JUST two months, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century has taken the world by storm. In it, he argues that substantial increases in inequality can only be reversed through government intervention. Piketty’s own suggestion is a 2 per cent annual wealth tax, and income tax rates of up to 80 per cent. In [...]
Beware the protectionist iceberg: The damage is below the surface May 7, 2014 THE PFIZER bid for AstraZeneca raises, yet again, the spectre of economic nationalism in Britain, albeit in a subtler form. Crude protectionism has been replaced by calls for a new public interest test to govern such takeovers. But to oppose such calls is not slavish, blind adherence to market dogma. It is merely recognition that [...]
Closing the deficit isn’t enough: UK debt is a risk to financial stability May 7, 2014 ELECTION 2015 is now under a year away. The battle lines are forming, but will any party set out credible plans for tackling government debt? While the deficit is falling, the nation’s debts are growing – with a far-reaching effect on government and public services. In the coming months, each political party will be preparing [...]
The truth behind China’s numbers May 6, 2014 FEW can doubt the importance of China to the world today. But as research by the World Bank’s International Comparison Program has highlighted – the country may be close to becoming as large an economy as the US on a purchasing power parity basis – China’s actual size and the speed of its growth are [...]
Why globalisation calls for a fresh perspective on the value of exports May 6, 2014 IMAGINE that, for some reason, you were forced to choose between having to read a long, turgid novel like Westward Ho or Middlemarch, or a book on the methodology of the national economic accounts. Most people, however reluctantly, would plump for the former. But the latter can at times be very exciting. A recent paper, [...]
Labour’s rent control plans would be a nightmare for tenants May 6, 2014 AS PART of its campaign against the “cost of living crisis”, Labour has stepped up with an offer to help struggling renters. Sadly, at best its proposals are a non-solution, and at worst a nightmare for tenants. The rent regulation that Ed Miliband plans to introduce would see three-year rental contracts become the norm, during [...]
Why Miliband’s rent control plan isn’t just some harmless gimmick May 1, 2014 TO DEAL with the problem of escalating rents, Ed Miliband plans to introduce what amounts to a variation of “second generation rent controls” (SGRCs). Under SGRCs, landlords are free to set rent levels at the outset of a tenancy, but are restricted in their ability to raise them during the term. In Miliband’s specific version, [...]
