Short-termism is bad – but so is excessive long-termism July 23, 2012 THERE are many excellent suggestions in John Kay’s review on the future of the UK equity markets. It makes sense for asset managers to be transparent about their costs, for an investors’ forum to be set up to coordinate collective action and for there to be a push to align incentives and create a culture [...]
Coalition’s lack of courage threatens a triple-dip recession July 22, 2012 SOMETHING quite astonishing happened yesterday – and no, I’m not referring to the gorgeous weather, or to Bradley Wiggins’ Tour de Force. The real miracle was that supermarkets opened for much longer than they are normally allowed to on a Sunday, with shops describing these as “summer opening hours” (out of fear of being prosecuted [...]
It’s not all bad: Britain is becoming safer despite recession July 19, 2012 REMEMBER the view, widespread on some parts of the political spectrum, that recessions and poverty are what cause crime? Well, it’s nonsense. We’re in the middle of a nasty double-dip recession, high levels of unemployment, a national pay cut, falling wealth, still high inflation, an agenda dominated by corporate scandals – and yet crime is [...]
Britain’s economy: a case of lies, damn lies and statistics July 18, 2012 THERE is something strange going on in the UK economy – or at least with the official statistics that we all have to rely on. The economy is shrinking – and yet employment and total hours worked are rising. Such a combination is possible, of course, but it implies a slump in productivity. The total [...]
Somebody needs to guard Canada’s guardians July 17, 2012 I HAVEN’T been a fan of all of the Treasury select committee’s recent outings. There have been some excellent moments and some dire ones. But Andrew Tyrie, the body’s chairman, did a great job yesterday. He pointed out that the removal of Bob Diamond raises serious questions about whether regulators should be given such arbitrary [...]
Britain’s booming population has reinforced London’s power July 16, 2012 NO other trend is as important as the population explosion since the Industrial Revolution: there are now more human beings than ever before. This holds true also for the UK: yesterday’s 2011 UK census results showed another huge rise. The population of England and Wales surged by 3.7m in the last decade – 7.1 per [...]
London homes still horribly expensive for first time buyers July 15, 2012 FIRST, the good news: the housing market is becoming less unaffordable for young people across the UK. The average price paid by a first-time buyer in June was affordable for someone on average earnings in 54 per cent of all UK local authority districts, the highest proportion for 10 years, according to the Halifax. At [...]
Demographic timebomb will force government to downsize July 12, 2012 IN the long run, we are all dead, as John Maynard Keynes used to say. But plenty of us will still hopefully be around by 2061, by which time the Office for Budget Responsibility informs us the public finances will once again be in crisis. The UK faces a demographic timebomb which will, in my [...]
Supporters of capitalism must help expose blundering firms July 11, 2012 CORPORATE blunders are like buses: they arrive all at once. The latest involve G4S, which doesn’t know whether it will be able to hire enough guards for the Olympics, forcing the army to step in. The O2 mobile network suffered some outages yesterday. Britvic recalled some of its drinks. All of this follows the Libor [...]
Massive revolt by Tory MPs is beginning of end for coalition July 10, 2012 YOU may not care about the government’s bizarre obsession with trying to replace the unelected House of Lords with an almost equally strange upper chamber. If so, you are not alone – the public has completely switched off from the arcane, introspective world of the Westminster village. Ordinary people want to talk about growth and [...]