Markets react rationally to austerity The piece below was posted on the “Left Foot Forward” website on Monday, 8th August, 2011 “It is important that we understand the events of last week not as a new outbreak of crisis, but as a continuation of the banking crisis that first came to the public’s attention in […]
Political leaders – Stand up to the bankers, you have only your chains to lose Read More »
The austerity brigade is rattled. Young Daniel Knowles over at the Daily Telegraph is so worried, he has had to rise to the defence of the Treasury and Office for Budget Responsibility – and then resorts to proposing Greece’s economic strategy for the UK. Why? Because orthodox economic ideology has been challenged by none other than Daniel’s
Knowles needs to listen more carefully to ‘hero’ Clinton on deficit reduction Read More »
Have just been told that my post on the Left Foot Forward on Ed Balls’s speech crashed the site “under weight of people wanting to read it”…so here it is for those of you that may have missed it…. David Cameron was delighted when the formidable Ed Balls walked straight into his framing of the
I thought long and hard before refusing to sign the letter calling for a Plan B. Not because I do not think it is urgently required. But because the letter called for “clamping down on tax avoidance and evasion, as well as by raising taxes on those best able to pay.” It goes without saying,
Why I did not sign the Observer letter for ‘Plan B’ Read More »
8 December, 2019 This is a remarkable editorial from the Financial Times. Reproduced below. https://www.ft.com/content/04d3614e-078a-11ea-a984-fbbacad9e7dd The global slowdown is not making the politics of macroeconomic policymaking any easier. While doves insist that softening growth requires more muscular support for aggregate demand, hawks legitimately point to the structural sources of the slowdown. This week brought more
The FT: Governments must learn to love borrowing again. Read More »
21 February, 2010 Once again apologies for a longish absence. This is down in part, to smashing (literally) building works, to a little grandchild-minding, and to other writing commitments. But have been itching to comment on a) Greece and the EU b) Iceland (it seems the UK is easing up on the pressure); c) the
17th January, 2009. This was posted on the Compass site on the 16th January. I am shortlisted for the North West Durham Parliamentary Selection. A less likely candidate you would be hard pressed to find. I am not a local big wig and did not grow up in the constituency. I don’t have the backing
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
12th December 2009 At the end of last month I delivered the prestigious EBOR lecture at York. My address was entitled: “Credit, usury and political power: chasing the moneylenders from the temple that is our democracy” Click on the link below to read a PDF version of the full lecture: EBOR Lecture November 25th (PDF)
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 »
