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 […]

Accountable: A letter in the Sunday Times called for Osborne to begin spending cuts a year earlier than planned In February 2010, twenty economists published a letter in the Sunday Times calling on George Osborne to begin spending cuts a year earlier than planned. The key sentence of that letter stated that, ‘In order to be credible, […]

Solution? Business secretary Vince Cable has said he wants to nationalise the 18pc of RBS that isn’t already owned by the taxpayer Vince Cable wants to nationalise RBS. You can see his logic. The taxpayer owns 82% of the firm already. Nationalisation is hardly such a radical idea; it’s more the logical completion of a […]

Another day, another banking scandal. Barclays’ LIBOR cheats exploited an arcane and out-dated rate-setting mechanism to fix rates in their favour – which means to your detriment. But just ripping off ordinary people and ordinary investors doesn’t win many points in the Bankster’s Cheat Olympics. If you really want to shoot for those medal places, […]

Hogging the headlines: In recent years, financial news has dominated the front pages – most recently the scandal at Barclays You know, there would have been a time when a financial contributor for the Daily Mail was restricted to the little stuff. Share tips, muttering about monetary policy, that sort of thing. Not any more. […]

Barclays bankers fiddle the LIBOR markets – a multi-trillion market – on a heroic scale. Other banks and bankers are being investigated too. Barclays will not be alone in its wrong-doing, and other banks may even have exceeded Barclays’ brazen contempt for truth and right-dealing. So what happens? So far, we’ve seen all the standard […]

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 […]

It’s a strange world we’re living in. This newspaper reported yesterday that, ‘Britain and the US joined forces to urge Germany to create a central Brussels body that could assume sovereignty over individual countries’ budgets and fiscal policies.’ Under pressure: German Chancellor Angela Merkel doesn’t want a Euro superstate – and can’t afford to finance one anyway […]