Monthly Archives: July 2011

             The Coalition government published a 60 month strategy in June 2010. The Chancellor increased spending and borrowing for the forecast 5 year  period by £34 billion in the March 2011 budget. How is it going now?             Readers of this site will remember that the strategy is to increase total current spending by [...]

         The public sector was willing and ready to jump on the private whenever it thought it could claim something had been missold to the investing public. There were demands for compensation, reparations and confessions. The perpetrators had to face the wrath of the Regulators.        I do not expect there to be so much censureship [...]

                The UK  political classes have been mesmerised by the Murdoch saga. The all party agreement to the  motion to ask Mr Murdoch to withdraw his bid duly led him to do so.            Meanwhile, outside the pressurised atmosphere of the debating chamber, the EU’s power brokers are locked in battle with each other, and [...]

             On Monday there were power failures and considerable service disruption on the Victoria line. Worried about getting back to the Commons in time, I got out at Oxford Circus. It was 6.30pm. The pavements were so crowded I could not walk quickly or even go in the direction I wished to go in. [...]

       Yesterday morning I attended a breakfast seminar. Professor Henkel from Germany told us how he had been a keen exponent of the Euro in the 1990s. As Head of the German equivalent of the CBI he had come to the UK to urge our membership of the currency.         He has recently  published [...]

                No-one denies that the UK needs to build some more power stations. Some of the nuclear ones are old and need to be retired. We  could also do with some extra capacity to cut imports and to provide us with the extra power we will need if the drive to increase industrial activity [...]

     Last night Parliament voted by 274 to 246 votes in favour of increasing the UK’s contribution to the IMF by £9.3 billion.  That implies more than 80 Conservatives were unavailable, abstained or voted against the government. Many Labour MPs were also unavailable or abstained, when their party recommended voting against. I will check the voting lists [...]

                This week-end has seen various economists claim there was no growth in the second quarter of 2011. The British Chambers of Commerce thinks export led manufacturing did well enough to ensure 0.3% growth for the second quarter.             I find it surprising that people are surprised that growth is slow. It all goes [...]

  The intensity of the coverage of the press issues is matched only by the ferocity of the language used by politicians and others to condemn largely unnamed malefactors. I agree that it is in bad taste and hurtful to listen to the phone messages of victims of tragedy, as well as being against the law. Let [...]

              Financial regulators are busily looking for the next crisis with a new intensity, as so many of them missed the last one before it hit them.            As some of you have pointed out, there is still a large overhang of derivatives out there in the market. Maybe they should look again at  that.       [...]