The line’s fine between credit booms and busts January 30, 2012 THE Bank of England’s current monetary policy rule is inflation targeting – they use the tool of interest rates (and more recently quantitative easing) to target a particular level of consumer price inflation (2 per cent). This is common practice among contemporary central banks, but the continued lack of recovery has meant that people are [...]
RAPID RESPONSES January 30, 2012 Generally agree Nice timing in the article by Sir Rob Fry (This former general says the real essence of strategy has been forgotten by business, yesterday) on the decline of strategy as a leadership competency – the Institute of Leadership and Management has been having just this debate recently. As an inveterate strategist, I share [...]
This former general says the real essence of strategy has been forgotten by business January 29, 2012 THE British government can’t do strategy. Who says so? The British government, that’s who. Or more precisely, that’s what the House of Commons Public Accounts Select Committee concluded after an inquiry last year. To the historian, this looks like a loss of national vocation. In the great wars of the twentieth century, the British often [...]
The Eurozone’s car crash can be less of a wreck January 29, 2012 FOLLOWING the Eurozone crisis is like watching a car crash in slow motion. European policymakers are facing down the oncoming debt crisis with entirely inappropriate protection, given the character and the magnitude of the problem rushing towards them. The bailout of Greece, the creation of temporary and permanent bailout funds, the talk of tougher fiscal [...]
We need to rebalance the anti-City rhetoric January 29, 2012 FIGURES published by the Office for National Statistics this week showed that over the last quarter manufacturing output shrank by 0.9 per cent, returning the total back to the level we saw in the same quarter two years ago. This is despite a substantial devaluation of sterling against the currencies of our major trading partners. [...]
RAPID RESPONSES January 29, 2012 Skin in the game Naturally any reference to stripping is bound to have a distracting effect, but readers seem to have missed the point of Jamie Whyte’s comparison in his column [Strippers can show us bankers’ just rewards, last Wednesday]. On Friday Tim Shoebridge complained that strippers are not sufficiently focused on the long-term profits [...]
Free Cities: How countries worldwide are unleashing new economic prosperity January 26, 2012 AN ASTONISHING 3.3bn people will move from the countryside to live in cities over the next forty years. How will we handle that influx? By installing better legal systems worldwide. Legal institutions determine whether nations are rich or poor. Think of East and West Germany and North and South Korea, two controlled experiments in which [...]
Six months to go – get in shape to win Olympic gold January 26, 2012 TODAY we hit six months to go until the start of the Olympic Games. Amid the daily diet of doom and gloom about the prospects for the UK economy, the Games offer a potential bright horizon in an otherwise challenging year. It certainly appears that many companies feel this way. Deloitte’s latest Games Readiness research [...]
RAPID RESPONSES January 26, 2012 Data deluge Craig Drake rightly emphasises the importance of institutions making big data “work for their business” [Big industry responses are needed to big data explosion, yesterday]. Data must be seen as an asset for businesses and managed properly. If it’s not, then it just becomes a liability. The financial services industry is only now [...]
Britain’s healthcare system is on the critical list – why are medical unions in denial? January 25, 2012 IT REALLY is time public sector unions stopped taking the lazy option. And those representing the medical profession, above all, should be showing the rest of their comrades leadership – for decisions made over the nation’s healthcare are a matter of life and death. Yet the doctors’ union is threatening to strike over the current [...]