This piece appeared in the London Observer on Sunday, 4th March, 2018 By asserting the policy of “monetary radicalism and fiscal conservatism”, Osborne and his colleagues ensured that those responsible for the crisis benefited from the Bank of England’s quantitative easing programme, which inflated asset prices largely owned by the more affluent. Simultaneously, the Conservative …
This was published on the PRIME site on the 25th February, 2018. Britain is led today by deeply divided political parties. Our leaders have many policies, but no inspiring vision for Britain’s future – either within, or outside the EU. As President Roosevelt once famously said: “where there is no vision, the people perish”. …
Early in February, a leading Brexiteer MP (Jacob Rees-Mogg MP) delivered a Daily Express petition to No 10 calling for an end to “foreign aid madness” – an event that gathered virtually no publicity. Why should it have? Jacob Rees-Mogg knows very little, and cares less about international development. The story died. A new …
The Economist had a piece on Britain’s tax base in its 25th January edition. It begins with a reference to Denis Healey’s speech to the 1973 Labour conference, in which he promised that tax increases would be met with “howls of anguish” from everyone, not just the rich. As it happens, I have been reviewing the …
This is the original, long version of an article I wrote for the Guardian. The published version was edited down, and appeared on 28th January. This version was written on 11th December, 2017. “If some of us grow rich in our sleep, where do we think this wealth is coming from? It doesn’t materialise out …
Together with Jeremy Smith of Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME), I wrote this for the website UnHerd.com, edited by Tim Montgomerie. The site’s aim is “to appeal to people who instinctively refuse to follow the herd and also want to investigate ‘unheard’ ideas, individuals and communities.” The piece begins with this quote from Alice Walker: …
I wrote a piece for the Saturday (26 January 2018) Guardian. Its been described by many as “counter-intuitive” – because in it I draw on the research of others (notably that of Ian Mulheirn – director of consulting at Oxford Economics) to argue that building more houses will not dampen house prices. I posed this …
Why building more houses will not solve the housing crisisRead More »
This opinion piece appeared in the Observer on 17th December, 2017. While the Daily Mail, with Pavlovian regularity, persists in ringing the “Marxist” alarm bell, the Financial Times is a little more measured. “Labour has a fair wind” with business leaders the paper argued recently “with many terrified of a hard Brexit”. At Britain’s biggest …
Why business could prosper under a Corbyn governmentRead More »
The Financial Times questioned economists for its annual publication of economic forecasts: “With unemployment at a 40-year low, how much of a pay rise will British workers get in 2018?” (See here: https://www.ft.com/content/98ce5e72-ebd9-11e7-bd17-521324c81e23) PRIME economists responded thus: The fall in real wages while employment has fallen and employment has risen is a consequence of sustained hyper-globalisation …
The Financial Times asked economists the following: How far will the Bank of England raise interest rates next year? Do you think they should? PRIME economists responded in this way: We think much will depend on the Federal Reserve and the ECB. The BoE will follow both, but will have time to assess the impact …
Will Bank of England raise interest rates in 2018?Read More »
