Economy

There have been signs that the US economy has been slowing for the best part of a year.  Poor retail sales in the run up to Christmas did not translate into improved sales in the New Year.  Although inventories remained high, sales were sluggish.  Manufacturing has been anaemic.  Most worryingly, …

Germany is the world’s fourth largest economy.  It is also the third largest exporter; and the powerhouse behind what little growth there has been in the Eurozone economy.  But according to Business Insider there are signs that the Germany is slowing to a halt… with potentially catastrophic results for the …

Portuguese banks are set to be the next to require massive state handouts in the latest instalment of the global financial crash that first emerged in 2007.  Although massive government borrowing by countries like the USA and the UK, that still enjoy their own currencies helped stave off a complete …

The claim that Britain faces an economic crisis in the event of a Brexit vote is widely seen as an integral part of “project fear”.  However, there might be a more sinister reason for the scaremongering. Figures from the Office for National Statistics this week show that the UK economy …

For all their claims to economic competence, George Osborne and David Cameron’s economic policy since 2010 has mainly been to try to recreate the conditions that existed in 2007.  Falling for the alchemy of mainstream classical economists, they diagnosed the key problem facing Britain to be not enough debt.  Through …

Despite political claims to the contrary, most of Britain’s FTSE 350 firms are unconcerned with Brexit.  A growing number are, however, worried about developments in the wider economy, according to a new survey by ICSA The Governance Institute. Fewer than half the respondents (43%) rated a UK exit from Europe as …

There are three possible futures for the global economy, according to Satyajit Das at the Independent.  First, there is the highly unlikely Lazarus scenario in which the global economy is risen from the dead by the economic wizardry of the central banks: “Such an outcome is unlikely. The fact that …

Recent proposals from the UK Competition and Markets Authority bolster the position of the big banks, according to Alex Hawkes at This is Money: “Big banks have to set aside substantially less capital to issue mortgages. They pay rock bottom rates for funding because they are sitting on hundreds of …

It was all meant to be so different.  Riding high after an unexpected election victory, and free from the moderating hand of his LibDem coalition partners, George Osborne was finally free to introduce full-blown Tory economic policies. It started to unravel almost immediately, of course.  The plan to cut the …

The shadow banking sector is made up of companies that act as intermediaries in the credit market; arranging loans that regulated banks could not or would not want to make directly.  They are the same kind of companies that acted as intermediaries arranging all of those sub-prime mortgage loans that …