No one benefits from a bonfire of the vanities September 22, 2011 WHEN it all ended, they sent children to tug the playing cards from gamblers’ hands and strip closets of their silks. Savonarola’s so-called angels swept away the fine paintings and the antique statues, delivering their loot to the great fire burning in the heart of the city. It was said that Botticelli himself threw pictures [...]
RAPID RESPONSES September 22, 2011 Strong medicine A double-dip is looking ever more likely. We can’t ease back on deficit reduction – the last thing we want to do is scare markets – we should focus instead on money supply. Yes, quantitative easing is a blunt instrument, and there is the risk of inflationary side-effects. But the patient is poorly [...]
Companies don’t pay taxes: we do. A Tobin Tax will cost us far more than it collects September 21, 2011 GLORY be, we are to be saved! As the TUC, President Nicolas Sarkozy, Chancellor Angela Merkel and the European Parliament agree, impose a Financial Transactions Tax (FTT) upon the banks and Europe, or at least the euro, will be saved. The banks shall pay for their errors and kittens will gambol in sunshine once again. [...]
It is always the perfect time to start a business September 21, 2011 WHY would now be a good time to start your own business, when the economy is weak and all around is pessimism? Well the truth is that plenty of great companies were started in downturns. In the depths of the Great Depression in the 1930s, Walt Disney launched his eponymous animation company, now almost the [...]
A lack of leadership is tearing Europe apart September 21, 2011 IN a moment of truth after losing referendums in France, the Netherlands and Ireland, Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, admitted to me that the EU could seem like a conspiracy by political elites against their citizens. Never has that been truer than of the euro crisis, which really is crunch time for Europe. [...]
RAPID RESPONSES September 21, 2011 Boris backs us With the crisis in the Eurozone deepening and world markets shakier than ever, headlines of financial Armageddon are today vying for space with stories of celebrity gossip. It can be tempting for commentators to shoot from the hip during times like these, but we must resist populist, reactionary instincts when trying to [...]
Eject Greece if you want to save the euro from sinking, warns a leading economist September 20, 2011 RATINGS agency Fitch was reported yesterday as predicting that Greece would default but not leave the euro. The reality now is that the kind of long-term solution that will be necessary to save the euro requires a euro of which Greece is not a member. The longer a Greek default and euro exit are delayed [...]
We need growth, minister: get off your hobbyhorse September 20, 2011 DURING his speech to the Liberal Democrats in Birmingham, business secretary Vince Cable warned that we are facing a crisis “the economic equivalent of war”. While that might be an overstatement, we can’t argue with the facts. Unemployment stands at 2.51m, inflation is at 4.5 per cent, and a Eurozone crisis threatens the confidence of [...]
Politicians don’t know how incentives work September 20, 2011 THE chancellor George Osborne and business secretary Vince Cable believe that Britain’s economic problems are partly to be blamed on poorly designed incentive schemes. They believe that senior businessmen are “rewarded for failure”. If this were true, it would indeed be a problem. But the idea is preposterous. Why would the owners of a company [...]
RAPID RESPONSES September 20, 2011 Euro exhaustion We need long term economic restructuring to make the euro function by assisting struggling countries – flogging them through zero-growth austerity is pointless. I’m not sure the degree of political understanding or will to make the euro work is present any more. Chronic electoral and investor fatigue is making us too weary. If [...]