From discussions on how the UK should reform its tax and regulatory landscape to make the most of post-Brexit opportunities, to the rallies midterm election candidates have been holding across the US championing or lambasting the President’s tax cuts, the debate is still raging about how changes
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The focus this week has been on Philip Hammond’s Budget. The opinions of the shadow chancellor have been rather in the background by comparison. But John McDonnell is doing us all a favour at the moment. He is busily promoting a collection of essays which he edited,
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This month saw the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a collapse which precipitated one of the only two global financial crises of the past 150 years. The late 2000s and early 1930s were the only periods in time when capitalism itself has trembled on
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Despite the warmth of the days, there is a distinct autumn feel to the mornings. And in the autumn, thoughts begin to turn to the Budget. Speculation has already begun about what the chancellor Philip Hammond might or might not do. For Labour, recent weeks have been
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The debate about Brexit has become mired in a virtually incomprehensible quagmire of detailed and technical negotiations between the UK and the rest of the EU. Yet the campaign itself in 2016 was dominated by broader questions of political economy. In addition to the hurly burly of
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Shareholder discontent over executive pay continues to rise. Last week, the outgoing boss of BT, Gavin Patterson, was in the firing line. At the company’s annual general meeting, 34 per cent of investors voted against the remuneration report, which included a £1.3m bonus payment to Patterson. Concern
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The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, is up to his usual tricks. Last week, he claimed in front of the Treasury Committee of the House of Commons that British households are now more than £900 worse off after the vote to leave the EU.
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The new Italian government looks set to cause shock waves across Europe. The two parties promise mass deportations of immigrants and huge increases in public spending. Both the social and the economic policies of the Italian coalition clash directly with those of the European Commission, and Germany
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The Trojans had to beware of Greeks bearing gifts. In the same way, politicians need to be suspicious of petitions signed by economists. The vast majority of the UK economics profession backed Project Fear, which predicted a rise in unemployment of half a million by the end
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Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, hit the headlines at the weekend, claiming that Marxism could once again become a prominent political force in the west. Automation, it seems, may not just destroy millions of jobs. For all except a privileged minority of high-tech
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