Almost 5 years after the crash, the UK economy remains in the doldrums. Now even the IMF is critical of the UK’s austerity programme. But the government is not for turning from its basic pursuit of austerity plus miniscule photo opportunity gestures like letting small businesses off their National Insurance contributions for a period. But [...]
We are experiencing an explosion of inequality to levels not seen since the darkest days of the nineteenth century, inequality, not just of wealth but, as George Monbiot suggested (The Guardian, 2nd April 2013), also of ‘decency, honesty and kindness’. His analysis is that the 99% have the virtues, while the 1% have the [...]
So President Francois Hollande has not given up on his election promise to levy a 75% tax on those who pay themselves, or get paid, in excess of €1m (£840,000) pa. The French high court rejected his original proposal, but it seems the revised version, to levy the tax on the payers rather than [...]
Every day, the BBC – in fact the whole media circus – faithfully report the progress of the FTSE100 share index, as though it were a portent of our economic future. Every day so called “experts” explain in detail the reasons for FTSE100 movements seemingly on the assumption that it still relates to the UK [...]
The media expressed shock and horror that Centrica should jack its prices up to its customers and pass £1.3bn of its surplus profits back to its shareholders. But why? That’s what Centrica’s directors think they are there for. And the media and most everyone else appears to share that misunderstanding that it’s the legal duty [...]
Back in July last year, this site pondered what would replace the public company, formerly the most powerful institution in the economy (see http://www.gordonpearson.co.uk/11/what-will-replace-the-public-company/). Its numbers had halved over the past decade and the number of small and medium sized firms’ initial public offerings had declined by more than 80%. Shareholders’ funds appeared [...]
Among all the debate about the vices and virtues of capitalism there is rarely any serious attempt to define its key characteristics. Whatever they are, they appear to work better than the best known alternative that’s so far been tried: centrally planned totalitarian communism. Whether good capitalism or bad, compassionate, predatory or even ‘conscious’, [...]
Advanced economies everywhere seem to be led by politicians who are media competent but practically inexperienced. They seem not to have learned from the experiences of 2012, but there are vital lessons to be learned and changes need to be made.
Recession: The much talked of double-dip morphed into talk of triple-dip and the [...]
After the Rigor rate fixing scandal, and the PPI mis-selling fiasco, we now have hysteria over gas and electricity companies fixing market prices to their advantage at the expense of the general customer. Well of course they’ve been doing that, it’s what they do. They aren’t charities. They charge whatever the market will bear. [...]
Globalisation reduces the cost of goods and services as their production migrates to the lowest cost parts of the world. The lower prices are a benefit for everyone and the low cost parts of the world, which are only now beginning to industrialise, gain tremendously in terms of economic growth and employment. So globalisation is [...]
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