Monthly Archives: June 2010

The last government’s recipe for recovery was wrong. It combined excess public spending and borrowing with monetary tightness for everyone else. The new government needs to change this formula – we need better controlled public borrowing combined with easier money to allow a private sector recovery. The latest money supply figures show money is still [...]

Dear America, I am writing to say how much all of us in the UK are grieving for the damage being done to livelihoods, wildlife and the environment by the oil spill in the Gulf. We understand your anger, fear and sense of helplessness as the oil gushes into the ocean and nears your shores. [...]

I have been told by journalists that the IFS are putting it about that taper relief for CGT is not a good idea. Mr Chote, their Director, wrote an article in the Sunday Times backing the “Liberal/Lawson” view against taper relief. The IFS is a registered charity employing 46 staff (in 2008 – the last [...]

Yesterday I was invited to talk to a seminar of public sector executives and some Public Affairs executives of larger companies about the change in the relationship between the individual and the state they could expect from the new government. I said the word that unites Lib Dems and Conservatives is liberty. We want to [...]

Last night BBC’s Newsnight created a TV Star Chamber to examine three areas of public spending. Two of the areas they raised are large and central to the task of reducing spending. They asked a panel of 3 including myself to evaluate a 5% cut in all public sector pay, and a five year freeze [...]

George Osborne has called for a debate on the limits to what the state should do. I hope he will be inundated with people’s views on all the needless interventions, meddlesome actions and over the top spending which has characterised national and some local government in recent years. It is difficult to know where to [...]

Labour are still at their old game. Their response today to David Cameron’s warnings about the deficit is more of the same. In their economic song book more public spending and more borrowing equals a stronger economy. On that basis why then is the UK economy so weak? Can’t they see that the UK is [...]

In the early 1980s all the figures you needed to understand public finances were published annually in the Red Book. Tyically around 40 pages long, it had a plain red cover. If you read it you knew the state of the national accounts. Labour’s last Red Book, published in March 2010, was 227 pages long. [...]

In 1999 a Euro was worth 71p. Between 2000 and 2002 it was around 60p. From 2003 to 2008 it fluctuated around 65-70p, just a bit below its first issue price. From 2008 the Euro took off against a falling pound, going above 90p. Since March 10th 2010 the Euro has been in freefall, and [...]

This week the Bank of England published figures to show just how its balance sheet has changed between 2008-9 and 2009-10. Its balance sheet has been swollen to a massive £223 billion, supported by just £4.2billion of shares and shareholder reserves. It is 50 times leveraged. Its loans to banks have been cut dramatically by [...]