RAPID RESPONSES November 6, 2011 Bailouts vs zombies As Marc Sidwell says [The Zombie Menace of Anti-capitalist Thought, Friday], the Occupy London protest is leaderless, yet he lumps all the protesters together as anti-capitalist. From what I’ve gathered, some may be anti-capitalist but there is a range of views; many are simply disgusted with the way that banks have been [...]
Four years into a succession of crises and still no reform: Time for some Long Finance November 3, 2011 FOUR years into a series of financial crises, from Bear Stearns and liquidity shocks in 2007, to Lehman and RBS failures, Irish and Icelandic collapses, and now Eurozone currency-quakes, there have been no financial reforms to match the magnitude of the problems. An Olympiad later, the world feels more brittle and people jump at any [...]
Leaving a legacy doesn’t just have to be a metaphor November 3, 2011 YOU can give without suffering. That is the heart of the launch of my new Legacy10 campaign. The donor will not feel the pain while they’re alive, even if their children might be a little worse off, but the charities that benefit from our generosity can be exponentially better off. The reality is that we [...]
The zombie menace of anti-capitalist thought November 3, 2011 WHEN the Occupy protest movement began, how twenty-first century it seemed: leaderless, emergent and driven by a fury at unprecedented cronyism between high finance and high politics. But how quickly it has decayed, in its London incarnation at least, into reheated anti-capitalist slogans with nothing original to say. Commerce is ancient, and so is the [...]
RAPID RESPONSES November 3, 2011 Rowan has fire Rowan Williams [Why the Archbishop has got it wrong, Wednesday] only gets the chance to get heard nationally when the opportunity is afforded to him. The media will publish a heated political perspective but would they allow a regular briefing on day-to-day morality or spiritual growth? Unlikely. I look forward to a [...]
Time to reach for the stars: Britain’s new space industry has the potential to blast off November 2, 2011 SIR RICHARD Branson opened the world’s first commercial spaceport last month. As his new venture Virgin Galactic recognises, space is an industry where the sky’s not the limit. For too long the domain of superpower rivalry between America’s Nasa and Russia’s Federal Space Agency, space is now giving way to the private sector, funded by [...]
To secure credit in the future we need clear rules November 2, 2011 THE latest uncertainty over a Greek referendum to agree debt writedowns demonstrates, now more than ever, that reliance needs to shift from banks to the securities market for the risk capital needed to fund future economic growth. The G20, which meets today, therefore needs to take steps to revive risk capital markets to support growth, [...]
If the City didn’t exist, we’d need to invent it November 2, 2011 WHAT have financial services ever done for me? It is a question that the Occupy the London Stock Exchange protesters could well ask themselves, as they bring the church (rather than capitalism) to its knees. The public debate about financial services has focused on bonuses and risks, but there has been virtually no discussion of [...]
RAPID RESPONSES November 2, 2011 Rites and wrongs I think Allister Heath [Why the Archbishop has got it wrong, yesterday], fails to understand the Church of England. There is plenty of room for Anglicans to disagree. Indeed, the Church of England was founded on dialogue. Moreover, theology is not much interested in the capitalism versus socialism debate. Rather, Rowan Williams [...]
It’s not just the Eurozone: A trade crisis is growing. The G20 must show leadership November 1, 2011 THE crisis spawned in 2007 has in many ways come to resemble Hydra – the mythical many-headed serpent of Ancient Greece, which grew two new heads every time one was cut off – already last Wednesday’s Brussels Summit shows no sign of marking a true turning point for the Eurozone. And while the euro-crisis commands [...]