Economy

Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan has raised concerns about the high level of private debt to GDP.  Chinese corporate debt is around 160 percent of GDP while private debt as a whole is around 230 percent; leaving Chinese banks at considerable risk from defaults. The Bank for International Settlements …

In the wake of the 2008 crash, we developed a form of schizophrenia.  We began talking about two economies: the “real economy” – the manufacturing and trade of goods and services that we mere mortals engage in – and the “monetary economy” – the daily exchange of computerised electronic numbers …

Buried beneath George Osborne’s cuts to disability benefits and his damascene conversion to a sugar tax was a measure that should alarm us all.  Osborne has made the tacit admission that energy is more important than the public finances. Between 1979 and 1999, Britain had been self-sufficient in fossil carbon.  …

It will not be a climate crisis or an energy crunch that will mark the start of our collapse.  Credit will be the first casualty of our predicament Claiming that Britain has a “savings crisis” is a bit like saying that someone infected with the Ebola virus has a fever.  …

MEPs from the European United Left/Nordic Green Left European Parliamentary Group have criticised the first annual report of the Banking Union for failing to deal with the structural problems plaguing European banks.  GUE/NGL Co-Shadow Rapporteur on the report, Rina Ronja Kari, explained: “When the big banks were saved during the …

“Why would someone lend money to a borrower with the certainty of getting less money back at a future date?” That’s the question posed by Bill Gross from Janus Capital group in his March newsletter to investors.  Comparing the contemporary state of the banking industry to the state of the …

The end of last week saw a flurry of stories about how banks were conning the public into thinking that “free banking” was really free.  Andrew Tyrie MP, chair of the Treasury Select Committee noted that there is no such thing as free banking, “it is not just misleading; it …

When they were elected with a small majority in May 2015, Tory ministers salivated at the prospect of generating a hydraulic fracturing (fracking) boom similar to the one in the USA.  It was meant to be a win-win.  The Bullingdon Boys and their chums in The City could get rich …

Beyond the obvious – that these are all proposed low carbon alternatives to fossil fuel – they are evidence of the failure of privatisation.  This is particularly obvious in the UK, where decades of over-zealous privatisation have led to a short-term focus on customer prices at the expense of future energy …

The heady pre-crash days of 2007 were the last time bank CEOs emerged to tell an unsuspecting public that all was well.  Within months, of course, banks and financial companies were falling like dominos and Western finance ministers were desperately looking for a means of preventing a financial meltdown.  The …