Monthly Archives: January 2010

The US and UK both allowed or encouraged excess credit up to 2007. Both slammed on the brakes too abruptly in 2007-8 and failed to see the impact of their actions on the general economy and the solvency of the banks. Thereafter, they diverged. The US offered short term financial help, and has now succeeded [...]

The President has failed his economics test. His decision to tax banks will make things worse. His tax is a levy on banks’ liabilities other than deposits from the public. It is designed to encourage banks to have smaller balance sheets. That makes it a way of limiting growth or acting as an incentive to [...]

Labour today are going back to talk about equality.It’s well within their comfrot zone. If they looked at the numbers and saw the growing inequalities they have presided over they might be more cautious in choosing this topic. I am with them when they condemn racial or class based discrimination. It is common political ground [...]

Dear Shareholder, Don’t worry. We had some silly nonsense last week from a couple of former employees. One I think was the Head of our company sanitorium for a bit, and the other apparently worked in security. They had some crack pot notion that we needed an immediate vote on whether I should stay as [...]

Just when I was getting used to my wayward car the snow and ice came. It made divorce inevitable. Today I am swapping it for a 4×4 in the hope that that might work in these Arctic conditions. With any luck such a move might also bring the micro Ice Age to an end. It [...]

Yesterday, a couple of weeks late, Parliament was treated to a Statement on the inclement weather. The Transport Secretary’s side kick in the Commons was asked to speak for his own department, for Local Government, for Health and Education on the state of play. The statement did not tell us much, and did not tell [...]

Yesterday Mr Cameron confirmed that a new government would need to accelerate the work to cut the deficit. It will need to start sooner and cut further than the current vague government plans. The Conservatives now understand that if you want a sustainable recovery you need to control the deficit before it controls you. There [...]

I met a successful entrepreneur the other day who told me he was on strike. He built up a good company, ran ir for many years, and sold out. He is young enough, energetic and wise enough to be able to run another good business. He has no current intention of doing so. He finds [...]

When President Obama made his first statement on the Intelligence failure over the underpants bomber it came over as a man attacking his own staff in public. That is not a good way to run something. If you are unhappy with how your staff has handled something you tell them in private, whilst supporting them [...]