Given the climate of intense uncertainty, the FTSE index remains remarkably resilient. It currently sits almost bang in the middle of the 7,000-7,600 range, where it has been since the beginning of January 2017. Brexit does not seem to trouble share prices. Nor do the threats by
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The office for National Statistics last week estimated that the UK economy grew at an annual rate of 2.4 per cent in the final quarter of last year. This is slightly above the long-term average growth of the past three decades. But a Financial Times survey this
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A bookseller in the Yorkshire Dales has hit the headlines, branded a “shopkeeper from hell”. He called a customer a “pain in the arse”, and has been the subject of numerous complaints to the local parish council about his rudeness. To complete the outrage, he charges 50p
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Economic forecasters are in the dock. Last week, none other than the chief economist of the Bank of England, Andy Haldane, was confessing the crimes of the profession. The failure to predict the financial crisis was, Haldane said, economic forecasting’s “Michael Fish” moment. Thirty years ago, the
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The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, was on good form last week when he appeared at the Treasury Committee of the House of Commons. Asked what “forward guidance” meant, he answered smoothly: “The thing about forward guidance is that it is guidance that is forward. Which
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The scenes as the migrant camp was cleared in Calais once again provoked bitter divisions in British society. Metropolitan luvvies and liberals tweeted their virtue and called for no restrictions on immigration. In more traditional areas, there is active resentment at the possibility of even further inflows
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The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) continues to generate concerns. The latest furore emerged at the start of this week. Researchers in the top ranked University College London computer science department claimed that an AI algorithm correctly predicts the outcome of 79 per cent of cases heard
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Tempers are fraying at the highest levels of economic policy-making in the UK. Theresa May, at the Conservative Party conference, emphasised the “bad side effects” for savers of the Bank of England’s policy of near-zero interest rates, a position reinforced by former Tory leader William Hague in
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It had been an article of faith among economists and policy-makers that free trade is a Good Thing. Trade liberalisation was a key feature of the world economic order enforced by the United States after the Second World War. For decades, the trend of removing trade barriers led to
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The economic data on post-Brexit Britain is beginning to emerge. We discovered last month that employment in May to July grew by 174,000 compared to the previous three months. Last week, the Office for National Statistics published its estimate for the output of the service sector of
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