13 May, 2010 With a backdrop of bankers looting the EU’s Treasuries (via a bailout that rivals George Bush’s TARP) let us consider one of the most significant Dem-Con appointments (and a non-appointment) to the British cabinet. That of someone who until now was invisible: David Laws the new Chief Secretary to the Treasury. His …
8th May, 2010. My latest Huff Post blog Britain’s political elites are doing deals this weekend, trying to form a government. Gingerly making their way across the shifting tectonic plates of public opinion; wary of being tripped up again by voters. For, let’s face it, the British electorate are no fools. As the governor of …
5th February 2010 My conversation earlier this week with Elena Sisti – of Italy’s Altreconomia on macro-economics, reform of the finance sector, money, and yes, how we women have left the all-important matter of finance to the boys. Big mistake. It’s time to get in there, and exercise influence. Too much is at stake.
15th January, 2009. Patient readers this blog is triggered by Jeff Randall’s column in the Daily Telegraph today. In it he inadvertently discloses the identity of the puppet-masters dictating the Tory political agenda around public spending cuts. In a somewhat histrionic column in which he describes the public deficit as a ‘disaster’ ( he should …
8th January, 2009 This piece appeared on the Guardian’s Comment site: “Today the people of Iceland, a country whose population, at 317,000, is somewhat smaller than Leicester’s, are required by the British political, financial and economic establishment to carry the full burden of the losses suffered by Landsbanki’s depositor programme Icesave. We consider this to …
5th January, 2010 Sorry about the delay in posting, but this is my latest blog for the Huffington Post. “One is president of a country of about 300,000 people — Iceland — a country about the size of Virginia, President Olafur R. Grimsson. The second is president of a country of about 300,000,000 people, the …
9th December, 2009 It has been an extraordinary day this day, and something to witness: this frenzy of pre-election fisticuffs. Extraordinary because Conservatives, like mindless bullies, are fighting a phoney war against the victims of this crisis. The fact is the Tories are spineless scaredy cats, too timid to take on the perpetrators, who have …
The pre-budget report: bullies in the playground Read More »
6th December, 2009. Most economists (who should know better) confuse the government’s budget deficit with total government debt. The distinction really is important. Mixing them up is a little like confusing stocks and flows. Or confusing your outstanding mortgage – say £200,000 – with your monthly debt repayments. They are quite different things, and if …
