Unemployment down, GDP up – there’s no logic for a public spending boost now
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 dominated by Jeremy Corbyn’s alleged antisemitism and undoubted […]
The UK’s capacity to innovate matters far more than panic over consumer spending
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 claims about extra NHS spending or Project Fear, […]
Investors should intervene to stop high executive pay, before the regulator does
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 about top pay has spread even to the […]
Mark Carney has bigger things to worry about than meaningless Brexit forecasts
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. The figure was obtained by comparing a forecast […]
Brussels elites who fiddled while Rome burned may soon get their comeuppance
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 and France. They represent a decisive break with […]
Trump’s tariffs are unlikely to plunge the global economy into a Great Depression
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 of 2016. Instead, unemployment has fallen almost continuously […]
Our automated future is brighter than Karl Marx or Mark Carney would ever suggest
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 workers, the collapse in the demand for labour […]
The chancellor should heed Keynes – and keep public spending down
Last week’s Spring Statement by chancellor Philip Hammond has led to predictable calls to “abandon austerity”. With massive hyperbole, Labour accused him of “astounding complacency” in the face of what they claimed to be the worst ever public funding crisis. The facts are rather different. Far from being squeezed, after allowing for inflation, current spending […]
Let’s join the IFS in acknowledging our misplaced fetishisation of economic data
Tomorrow, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) will publish its latest estimates on how much the UK economy grew between October and December 2017, compared to July to September. Last month, the ONS thought that there was an increase of 0.5 per cent. The economy cannot be put in a set of scales and measured. […]
Carillion shouldn’t be brought under state control, but maybe central banks should be
A strong thread in the acres of print about the Carillion debacle is that the private sector should not really be involved in infrastructure projects. The public sector would, apparently, do it better. Readers who experienced life under the nationalised rail and telephone systems might be forgiven their scepticism. One idea which is taking hold […]
