View from London
Damage to growth has been done
One year on, how does it feel? How does it feel to know that you can't sell
your house? That you can't get a loan from the bank to buy a house or, for
that matter, anything else? That unemployment is on its way up?
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Inside View from London
The UK’s ongoing economic problems
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
Saturday 17 October, 1964. Jim Callaghan sat at his desk in 11 Downing Street.
As the new Chancellor of the Exchequer following Labour's election victory,
it was Callaghan's job to sort out Britain's economic problems.
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The Chancellor’s golden goose is no more and the cash has run out
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
It turns out, then, that the Government signed a pact with the financial
devil. It was only as a result of the housing boom, the lending glut and big
City bonuses that the Government was able to raise the revenues to fund its
ambitions for education and health.
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Economic forecasters could learn from meteorologists
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Economists would make hopeless weather forecasters. Weather forecasters, at
least those who worry about the British weather, are not keen on
extrapolation.
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East European economic zombies stalking the IMF
Tuesday, 7 April 2009
When the leaders of the G20 sat down to their Jamie Oliver dinner at Downing
Street last week there was a ghost at the feast.
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Domestic demands may spoil a global economic solution
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
How much will the financial crisis eventually cost? I'm not talking about the
billions of pounds or the trillions of dollars being spent to rebuild the
world's financial system.
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The answers to the current crisis could lie in Japan
Monday, 23 March 2009
What, today, counts as economic policy success? At their recent meeting the
G20 finance ministers promised to “take whatever action is necessary until
growth is restored.”
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Will printing more money ease crisis?
Monday, 16 March 2009
There is something wonderfully quirky about the way in which a major change in
monetary arrangements is announced in the UK.
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Did Marx have it right all along?
Monday, 9 March 2009
“Modern bourgeois society... a society that has conjured up such gigantic
means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer
able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his
spells.”
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Eurozone is being stress-tested, but it will not break apart easily
Monday, 2 March 2009
The European leaders gathered recently in Berlin, their aim apparently being
to move towards a common approach at the forthcoming Group of Twenty
economic summit in London in April, as to what to do about the global
downturn.
Comment: 1
Rate cuts will not end this crisis
Monday, 23 February 2009
“Chugger chugger chugger chugger”... yes, it's the sound of the printing
press. With UK interest rates down to 1% and US interest rates at zero, it's
no longer possible to pretend that rate cuts alone will bring this economic
crisis to an end. In the monetary sphere, something else needs to be done.
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Monetary and fiscal policy can do little without a return of trust
Monday, 16 February 2009
How bad is the current crisis? Bad enough for Barack Obama's new US
administration to reach a deal with Congress on an $827bn (£560bn) stimulus
package, worth almost 6% of GDP if delivered in a single year.
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Roquefort cheese spat may be first whiff of a return to fiscal nationalism
Monday, 9 February 2009
As a symbol of the growing protectionist backlash, it’s hard to beat the
recent protests in the UK.
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Why the Bank of England needs to look back and think the unthinkable
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
On October 24, 1930, a report from the British government's Economic Advisory
Council was circulated by Ramsay MacDonald, the Prime Minister, to his
Cabinet.
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Bank of England was powerless in the face of excessive credit growth
Monday, 26 January 2009
Rationing is associated with the Second World War, austerity Britain in the
late 1940s and early 1950s and, for those familiar with Moscow pre-Glasnost,
the empty shelves of GUM, the Soviet Union's leading, but mostly empty,
department store in the 1970s and 1980s.
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Confidence in the economy is held up by gossamer threads
Monday, 19 January 2009
“In the bleak midwinter ... ” Britain's weather may be distinctly chilly at
the moment, but its economic climate is a lot frostier. And unlike the
weather, there's no escape. Economically, it's hard to find sunnier climes
elsewhere in the world.
Comment: 1
Blueprint for dealing with the horrors of debt inflation
Monday, 8 December 2008
In late 2002 Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Federal Reserve, gave a
speech entitled “Deflation: Making Sure ‘It' Doesn't Happen Here”.
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Another currency crisis... it’s enough to make you nostalgic
Monday, 24 November 2008
Stick your head out of the window, inhale deeply, and enjoy the sweet, yet
sickly, scent of nostalgia. It's everywhere.
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So who was ultimately to blame for the credit crisis?
Monday, 10 November 2008
It took about 40 years for a reasonably consensual explanation of the Great
Depression that could be rattled off in three minutes to emerge.
Comments: 2
Stephen King: Economic beauty contest can become an ugly mess
Monday, 3 November 2008
Given Alan Greenspan's recent dose of the doubts, at what level should we
trust markets?
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Memo to Gordon ... think radical and dump Bank target
Monday, 27 October 2008
Inflation targeting was designed to put the UK economy on the straight and
narrow after years of excess.
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