DEBATE: Should the Bank of England cut interest rates this week? January 29, 2020 Should the Bank of England cut interest rates this week? Simon Ward, economic adviser at Janus Henderson Investors, says YES. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) keeps making mistakes because it ignores monetary trends. It hiked rates in August 2018 even though 12-month broad money growth (as measured by non-financial M4) had slumped from 6.5 per [...]
Australian Dollar to GBP – Could this be one to watch? January 24, 2020 Singapore Dollar Fears of the coronavirus which has been spreading from China have affected global market sentiment. This week in Singapore December consumer price inflation results beat expectations; with food, transport, communication, and education costs the highlights. Beating November’s 0.6 per cent and the prediction of 0.7 per cent, December’s 0.8 per cent result is in line with the Monetary Authority of Singapore [...]
Coronavirus: China widens travel lockdown as death toll rises January 24, 2020 Fourteen people in the UK have been tested for a new strain of the coronavirus, with five testing negative as the others await results, Public Health England said today. An incident team has made a base in Scotland where five people were tested amid 830 confirmed cases of the virus across the world. The death [...]
Boris can lead a Conservative council housing revolution January 24, 2020 With Boris Johnson now undisputed world king of the post-Brexit scene, the only relevant policy debates are those going on inside the government itself. These are yielding unusual fruit. Esther McVey, a deep-dyed Thatcherite and an advocate of blue-collar Conservatism, has been arguing for more council housing. The housing minister wants to help those “left [...]
Barristers remain bullish despite threats to fees January 20, 2020 Nearly three-quarters of barristers said their practice has grown or remained stable in the last three years, according to research published today. The growth comes despite challenges facing the independent bar, including government cuts to legal aid and a move towards fixed costs in private cases, both of which are driving down fees. The survey [...]
Fintech can be the silver bullet to banking the UK’s unbanked January 15, 2020 Can new technology help the 1.23m people in the UK who don’t have a bank account? And could it improve the lives of the 10–12m who still struggle to access affordable loans? New research suggests that the answer to both those questions is yes. It is all thanks to London’s booming fintech sector — one [...]
Barrelling towards conflict: How the oil market reacted to Iran-US tensions January 14, 2020 For good or ill, oil remains the lifeblood of the global economy. It is essential to industrial production, to how we transport goods (as well as ourselves) around the world, and how we heat our homes and generally go about our everyday lives. Rising oil prices can therefore act as a handbrake on global growth, [...]
Home is where the heart is: how to revolutionise the house buying process January 9, 2020 For too many people, home ownership is a distant dream. In today’s Britain, only about 27 per cent of people aged 25 to 34 own their home — a huge dip compared to 1990, when ownership for this age group was 50 per cent, according to the Resolution Foundation. Sky-high property prices, the need to [...]
America and Iran are sleepwalking towards disaster January 9, 2020 I well remember that I kept putting my hands to my head as I read, terror-stricken, Christopher Clark’s provocative The Sleepwalkers, which boldly posited that World War I was not part of anyone’s grand strategic design. Instead, Armageddon came about through a number of countries and statesmen making lesser errors, which compounded somehow produced the [...]
We can make this the decade of purpose-driven capitalism January 6, 2020 As we enter the 2020s, capitalism is suffering a crisis of confidence. Populists around the world are putting a simple spin on globalisation as against the interests of ordinary people. By contrasting the growth in developed economies with a simultaneous squeeze on living standards, they argue that the link has been severed between a profitable [...]