Why the housing crisis is clobbering London businesses February 24, 2014 THE HOUSING crisis is the biggest challenge facing London. For the first time ever, it is now Londoners’ top concern. For low and middle income Londoners, home ownership is increasingly out of reach, rents consume an ever increasing percentage of their income, and homelessness is rising. But the crisis is also seriously damaging the competitiveness [...]
The only solution to the housing crisis: build, build and build February 20, 2014 BRITAIN is building again at last – or so the government would like us to believe. On the face of it, it has a point: the latest homebuilding statistics reveal that starts on new homes in 2013 totalled 122,590, up 23 per cent on the previous year, and the highest since 2007, according to the [...]
Bottom Line: Beware of history repeating itself February 11, 2014 CAST your mind back to October 2008. As the financial crisis took hold, governments across the world unveiled multi-billion bank recapitalisation plans, while central banks simultaneously slashed interest rates to record lows and the FTSE plunged lower – falling a full 10 per cent in one single session. Over in Ukraine, meanwhile, the hryvnia was [...]
Flooding crisis: A case study in the failure of government on all levels February 11, 2014 THE STATE’S many faces have been tearing pieces out of each other as the water level rises around London commuter towns. Who is to blame for England’s flooding crisis? Eric Pickles said it was the Environment Agency, but now thinks everyone should work together. Labour’s Lord Smith, the Agency’s head, has criticised spending cuts. David [...]
Why wage subsidies are not the best way to help the poorest paid in Britain February 5, 2014 BRITAIN’S tax credit regime was introduced by Gordon Brown in an attempt to boost the living standards of the low paid. But by topping up pay, this effective state wage subsidy has worrying long-term implications for the worst off and the economy. Tax credits suppress natural market pay rises, encourage overmanning (particularly in non-growth sectors), [...]
Tech resentment in San Francisco is ignoring the real culprit: Government February 4, 2014 RENTS are rising, pushing people on low incomes out of the neighbourhoods they’ve lived in for years. Resentment towards the rich is growing, with the most profitable and dynamic industries singled out for the most ire. Talk of a cost of living crisis, driven above all by the cost of housing, is dominating politics. This [...]
Tech resentment in San Francisco is ignoring the real culprit: Government February 3, 2014 RENTS are rising, pushing people on low incomes out of the neighbourhoods they’ve lived in for years. Resentment towards the rich is growing, with the most profitable and dynamic industries singled out for the most ire. Talk of a cost of living crisis, driven above all by the cost of housing, is dominating politics. This [...]
Federal Reserve’s selfishness triggered emerging markets chaos January 28, 2014 IF you want to know what old fashioned, hard-core monetary policy used to look like – the kind that those readers who lived through the UK’s European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) humiliation will remember – look no further than what happened to Turkey, a country at the epicentre of the growing emerging market crisis, last [...]
The grave crises facing Putin’s Russia lay bare its fundamental weaknesses January 28, 2014 CHAOS in Kiev must feel uncomfortably close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Ukrainian parliament yesterday annulled laws that sought to clear the streets of protesters against Ukraine’s increasingly authoritarian pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. Ukraine’s prime minister and government have quit, and the country stands perilously on the edge of deeper conflict – prompted initially [...]
As Miliband also sets sights on the SME vote January 26, 2014 SPEAKING after David Cameron’s keynote speech at the Federation of Small Businesses this morning, Labour’s Chuka Umunna will announce that the party would set up a Small Businesses Administration (SBA) if it wins the 2015 general election. The new forum would work across government departments to promote the small business agenda. “We need government to [...]