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View from London

Growth may not happen for a few years yet

Being flexible will allow economy to grow at last

It is time to look forward — and not because 2011 has been a deeply disappointing year.

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Inside View from London

Eurozone crisis has left the politicians floundering

Tuesday, 20 December 2011

The information flow from and about Europe is too relentless, too wall-to-wall, too intense, too confused. This makes it hard to sort out what is new and significant in both the data and statements of the officials and politicians.
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We must wait and see how this will all turn out

Tuesday, 1 November 2011

Well, that is that, or at least sort of that. What's next? All experience should teach us to be very wary of first reactions to any new chunk of financial information and we should see the outline European deal in that light.
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A balanced EU is just as vital as a balanced budget

Tuesday, 25 October 2011

Let's assume - and I know it is a dangerous assumption - that they eventually manage to do a credible deal that carries the three elements needed to stitch together the eurozone for a while yet.
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There is a silver lining to Fitch's banks downgrade

Tuesday, 18 October 2011

Four words have haunted us since the earliest days of the financial crisis four years ago: too big to fail. But if the downgrades of British banks' credit ratings announced last week by Fitch are anything to go by, we may finally be laying the ghost to rest.
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Printing money could save us from European turmoil

Tuesday, 11 October 2011

Just print the money! One of the things that a central bank can do and do without limit is to flood the markets with liquidity.
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It's bleak, but we can still keep this show on the road

Tuesday, 4 October 2011

We know more about the short-term future of the eurozone this week than we knew last week, but the medium-term outlook remains as cloudy as ever.
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We're paying for previous excesses of the last boom

Tuesday, 27 September 2011

Alost decade? It is a nasty prospect but one that you hear repeated a great deal in recent days on both sides of the Atlantic... the idea that we in the developed world are in some way condemned to a longish period of relative economic failure.
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The Greek default could happen sooner than later ECB pumps money into markets three years on

Tuesday, 20 September 2011

When central banks want to make an impact they act in concert. They have the power to pump money into the financial system almost without limit: to provide short-term liquidity to the world's banks.
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The Greek tragedy at the heart of a eurozone crisis

Tuesday, 13 September 2011

The turmoil of the eurozone continues, with this week already proving a particularly difficult one. The immediate issue is that the second bailout of Greece seems to be faltering even before it is in place. The longer-term one is nothing less than the future of the eurozone, for the decisions taken now will help shape the way it develops.
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US will set the trend for the speed of the UK's recovery

Tuesday, 6 September 2011

Is this a normal early-cycle dip or something more sinister?
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This great Swiss roll over is unfair to honest taxpayers

Tuesday, 30 August 2011

Just how pleased should we be that George Osborne has persuaded his Swiss counterparts that they should pay some compensation for the fact that billions of pounds of British tax dodgers' money is currently parked in secret bank accounts in their country?
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Times are changing, but Osborne remains resolute

Tuesday, 23 August 2011

Nothing, it seems, will persuade George Osborne to change his mind about Plan A for austerity.
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Don't ban short-selling, if you know your onions

Tuesday, 16 August 2011

When I find a short-seller, I want to tear his heart out and eat it before his eyes while he's still alive." So said Dick 'the Gorilla' Fuld, former boss of Lehman Brothers, before its downfall.
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Keeping our heads above water as world all at sea

Tuesday, 9 August 2011

A slowdown, or something worse? Our economy is an unusually open one, so what happens here depends very much on what happens in the rest of world.
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US debt default may spur return to fiscal prudence

Tuesday, 2 August 2011

Maybe it takes a crisis to lead to real change but if the crisis results in a short-term patch rather than fundamental reform maybe that is the worst outcome of all.
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We can't lecture on debt, it's time to get our house in order

Tuesday, 26 July 2011

The events in Brussels and Washington last week were indeed dramatic but the substance is mundane: what is the mechanism whereby some taxpayers are persuaded to part with more of their money and others to receive fewer services from governments, in order that the mathematics of public finance balance?
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Making haste slowly may be best US policy

Tuesday, 19 July 2011

There are some questions in finance to which the obvious answer is: yes, of course. Here are a couple. Does it matter if the US Congress cannot agree to an increase in the country's borrowing limit by August 2 — the date, so we are told, that the US hits its present debt ceiling?
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