Mervyn King’s decade at the Bank of England was a disaster. The Bank was too slack during the long and indisciplined boom, under prepared for the crash and playing catch-up thereafter. The legacy of Lord King’s (and Gordon Brown’s) career has been an economy still limping along far below peak output, real wages caught in […]

Barack Obama made a speech recently pledging his opposition to (yet another) game of chicken over America’s debt ceiling. “This is the United States of America,” he told his audience. “We’re not some banana republic. This is not a deadbeat nation. We don’t run out on our tab. We’re the world’s bedrock investment – the […]

Here’s a piece of recent news that you almost certainly missed: A large consumer products company, Johnson & Johnson, announced a one-off loss owing to a 32 percent currency devaluation in Venezuela. The reason I expect you missed that less-than-seismic piece of news is that, unless you happen to be particularly fascinated in Johnson & […]

A hundred years ago, a generation of men – many of them volunteers – fought an unprecedently bloody war for almost invisible gains. The men were heroes, but the generals commanding them were too often blunderers, too little conscious of the ever-mounting casualties. David Cameron is right to demand that our schoolchildren are reminded of […]

Last week I wrote a piece about Congress: its failure to take responsibility for problems, the way its un-shining example has a tendency to corrupt all our other national institutions. The post garnered a remarkable number of comments, the majority of which agreed strongly with the view I expressed. Just one thing disturbed me, however, which […]

Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, got snappish when asked about the Eurozone crisis by a Canadian journalist.  ‘Frankly, we are not here to receive lessons in terms of democracy or in terms of how to handle the economy,’ he said. ‘This crisis was not originated in Europe; seeing as you mention […]

The United Kingdom has too much debt. Reports normally focus on government debt: currently around 80% of national income, unless you take into account (as you should) the debts of the bailed-out banks and their toxic portfolios, which would pretty much double that figure. But what about consumer debt? Mortgage debt? Business debt? The huge […]

There’s a lot of talk about Europe at the moment, but it’s kind of the way you talk about flooding when the waters don’t reach your house. Sure, it must be real tough for the poor saps whose couches are bobbing around in their living rooms — but meantime, what’s for dinner? Unfortunately, that European […]

Earlier this week, on 21 May, the Financial Times ran a short piece which opened thus: ‘There has been no official announcement. No terms or conditions have been disclosed. But Greece’s banking system is being propped up by an estimated €100bn or so of emergency liquidity provided by the country’s central bank – approved secretly […]

You know those summer thunderstorms we used to have? You’d be sitting out in a warm garden somewhere, sipping something cold and white, looking at lightning flashing on the horizon and counting the seconds until you could hear the thunder. Well, it’s like that now, only the gap between the flash and the rumble is […]