Monthly Archives: June 2010

There are four pieces of welcome news on the new CGT proposals. The first is that savers with modest incomes will still only pay 18% on modest gains over the tax free allowance. The second is the substantial increase in the entrepreneurs allowance as an encouragement to people to establish and grow businesses. The third [...]

Yesterday the yuan edged higher against the dollar as the first installment in China’s new approach to its currency after a period of pegging it to the dollar. Although the move was small, it was important. There are no guarantees of a big revaluation, and no suggestion that China will move to an unmanaged rate. [...]

We do make heavy weather of controlling public spending in this country. The £6 billion of cuts which caused such anguish in the Election debates represented less than 1% of total public spending. Tomorrow’s budget will probably be proposing cuts of less than 10% over the lifetime of this Parliament. Sensibly managed, this need not [...]

Good news – China will revalue the yuan. The huge imbalances in the world stem from supercompetitive China knocking the rest into a cocked hat. Gradual increaes in the value of yuan will help rebalance a bit, and will mean China is nearer to the end of her period of slowing her economy by restricting [...]

I was pleased to hear yesterday through the media that the budget will include measures to boost a private sector recovery at the same time as taking action to control the public deficit. As I have been arguing, the country needs hope and budget control needs the prospects of many more private sector jobs. Curbing [...]

Some bloggers advise me to keep away from football commentary. Last night I returned home in time for the highlights of the England game. That didn’t take long to watch. England have now played around three hours of match football wthout scoring a goal after their stylish opener against the USA. Perhaps our football experts [...]

The government needs an MPC which gets it right. Unfortunately, for the last five years, the MPC has been well behind the plot, lurching from too easy to too tight to printing money. Today their rationale for believing inflation is not a problem is that our economy enjoys a lot of unused capacity. So, they [...]

BP’s decision to go to the White House on Mr Obama’s terms was strange enough. I would have thought they should have offered to go in conjunction with their main American sub contractors, saying “We are all in this together. We need all to be available to answer the President’s questions and to show how [...]

It was good to learn yesterday that projects announced shortly before the election which Labour could not afford are to be cancelled. I am surprised in many cases that people think it worthwhile arguing against such cuts, when there is no money to pay for these new commitments. The BBC chose to give time to [...]