Budget 2020: Chancellor dodges fiscal rule change as borrowing rises March 11, 2020 UK chancellor Rishi Sunak has deferred a decision over changes to Britain’s spending rules, saying he will consult experts and report back in the autumn. The decision came as the chancellor announced the UK budget deficit would rise to 2.4 per cent of GDP in the 2020-21 financial year, up from 2.1 per cent this [...]
German economists call for more spending to tackle coronavirus March 11, 2020 Leading German economists have called on Angela Merkel’s government to increase spending and defer taxes to tackle the economic fallout from coronavirus. Germany agreed a package of measures on Sunday night that aim to help companies struggling with disruption to supply and demand and include €12.4bn (£10.9bn) in state investment. In a letter to Chancellor [...]
If we want cutting-edge R&D, we must rethink our attitude to failure March 11, 2020 A likely centre-piece of today’s Budget will be a new agency to fund high-risk, high-reward scientific research. Brainchild of the Prime Minister’s chief special adviser Dominic Cummings, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (Arpa) is to be modelled after similar bodies in the US — most notably Darpa which has focused on defence related research. Darpa [...]
Rate cut reaction: Businesses welcome Bank of England emergency stimulus March 11, 2020 UK businesses, banks and academics have welcomed the Bank of England’s emergency interest rate cut and raft of other measures to support the economy as it slows amid the coronavirus outbreak. The Bank slashed rates to 0.25 per cent – the joint-lowest on record – at an emergency meeting this morning. It also offered banks [...]
Coronavirus: City recruiter braced for Square Mile hiring ‘to fall off a cliff’ March 11, 2020 Top City recruiter Morgan McKinley yesterday said hiring in the Square Mile could grind to a halt if the coronavirus outbreak causes more businesses to close offices and make staff work from home. Already financial services recruiters are noticing an increase in requests to reschedule face-to-face interviews between clients and candidates to be over telephone [...]
UK economy posted zero growth even before coronavirus March 11, 2020 The UK economy flatlined in January, data has shown, as industrial production contracted and the services sector struggled even before coronavirus spread in Britain. The zero growth figure was below analysts’ expectations of a 0.2 per cent expansion, and shows that the pick-up in confidence after Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s December election win failed to [...]
Budget 2020: How Rishi Sunak will tackle coronavirus and hike spending March 11, 2020 Chancellor Rishi Sunak is set to unveil the 2020 Budget today after the Bank of England’s shock move to slash UK interest rates. Just four weeks into the job, Sunak has spent the last 27 days planning to hike public spending. Record investment would see the government mark the end of austerity. But he is [...]
How mathematical models attempt to predict the spread of disease March 11, 2020 The various pronouncements on coronavirus are a source of puzzlement to many. On the one hand there are lurid predictions of millions of cases and hundreds of thousands of deaths. On the other, while the actual numbers are growing, they seem tiny so far compared to the scale of the predictions. Almost 100 years ago, [...]
Coronavirus: Bank of England slashes UK interest rates to 0.25 per cent March 11, 2020 The Bank of England today slashed UK interest rates to just 0.25 per cent in a bid to tackle the fallout of the coronavirus outbreak on the economy. The 50 basis point (0.5 percentage point) cut takes interest rates lower than the 0.75 per cent they were already at, in a move designed to boost [...]
Entrepreneurs’ relief: A tax break unravels? March 11, 2020 Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s first Budget beckons, and business founders will be looking out for one announcement in particular: will he scrap entrepreneurs’ relief? The controversial tax break enables people who start their own successful businesses to pay less capital gains tax when they eventually sell it on. It was originally intended to encourage people to [...]