Blog Profile / Telegraph.co.uk Finance Blog
| URL : | http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Business & Finance | |
| Posts on Regator: | 2054 | |
| Posts / Week: | 12.7 | |
| Archived Since: | April 19, 2010 | |
Blog Post Archive
How Henry Ford made the case for a living wage
I've found a way of linking my two most recent blogs – one on why the minimum wage should be substantially raised, not cut, the other on why robots will not be taking your job. One of Henry Ford's great insights as a businessman was to realise that in order to create a mass market [...]
Watch out: the robots are going to take your job – not
Martin Ford makes some excellent points in his latest Project Syndicate op-ed – To The Jobless Economy – but still manages ultimately to fall for the old chestnut that progressive automation will ultimately do us all out of a job. I'm not denying that the argument is superficially compelling, but unless history is about to [...]
Low-paid workers will suffer 50pc higher marginal tax rates than millionaires
While Chancellor George Osborne insists benefit reforms are designed to help hard-working families, new rules which take effect on Saturday will mean that some of the poorest people in the country pay marginal rates of tax that are half as high again as those paid by millionaires. Many on the minimum wage will be left [...]
Minimum wage should be substantially raised, not cut
According to a report in this morning's Daily Telegraph, the Low Pay Commission is to have its terms of reference changed in a manner which would allow it to freeze or even cut the minimum wage if the economic uncertainty continues. This is wrong headed, not just morally, but economically. We should be substantially raising [...]
New City regulator urges whistleblowers to protect consumers but who will protect the whistleblowers?
The head of the new City regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), began his first week in office by calling on employees who know about wrongdoing in the industry to speak out – but Britain lacks financial protection for whistleblowers. Martin Wheatley, managing director of the FCA, which replaced the Financial Services Authority (FSA) on April [...]
Are stock markets about to enter the next great bull phase? Consult the locust cycle.
The S & P 500 achieved another milestone earlier today – a new all time record. The last time it was at this rarified level was in 2007, just before the banking crisis, and the time before that in early 2000, just before the dot.com bust. Is a similar catastrophe about to hit this time, [...]
Landlords call for compulsory regulation but will it really drive out the Rigsby rogues?
The Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) is calling for the compulsory regulation of all privately-rented property, which many may welcome as an unquestionably good thing, but could it prove to be a case of turkeys voting for Christmas? Worse still, might it drive up rents? Buy-to-let (BTL) has proved one of the most profitable [...]
Investing for income: Experts tip seven blue chip shares to beat inflation
Which blue chip shares offer investors for income the chance to beat inflation? Four years after the Bank of England froze interest rates at a historic low of 0.5pc, rising numbers of emails and letters concern the struggle to preserve the real value or purchasing power of savings. Most bank and building society accounts [...]
We knew the Financial Services Authority was asleep on the job. Now it's gone completely mad
Sorry to use a cliche, but your really couldn't make this up. Bringing the UK economy to its knees, fraudulently engaging in libor manipulation, mis-selling billions of pounds of payment protection insurance, and whatever else you'd like to fish out from the great cesspool of banking misdemeanors from the past five years – none of [...]
Fasten your seat belts – a balance of payments crisis looms
Whatever happened to the holy grail of a more balanced UK economy? Britain has been living substantially beyond its means for more than thirty years now. Spending more than we earn long pre-dated the Labour years. And it's getting worse, not better. Fact: Britain has not enjoyed a current account surplus since 1983. Fact: the [...]
Up Pompeii: oh for the days when bankers were slaves (trivia)
Bankers as slaves? In an age where it seems to have been the bankers who have enslaved everyone else, this might seem like a contradiction in terms, but such a world did once exist – no, really. The things we journalists have to do, but I've just been along to a preview of the British [...]
Cypriot "solution" threatens further economic carnage among the other PIGS
There is no mess quite so bad that eurocrat intervention won't make even worse. Ever since the Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem declared that Cyprus would act as a template for other struggling eurozone lenders, the sound of screeching brakes and gear sticks being wrenched rapidly into reverse has been deafening. This is what he [...]
Michael Gove's wife is wrong. The campaign which lost in 2005 could win today
To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. The writer of Ecclesiastes knew something Michael Gove's wife doesn't. Sarah Vine's broadside against Boris in this morning's Times (£) contains the following assertion, something of a mantra to Cameroons: Johnson's real enemy is not himself but the way others [...]
Cypriot bank crisis boosts demand for gold
The Cypriot banking crisis reminds even the most trusting savers that not all banks or jurisdictions are safe – and is boosting demand for gold, bullion dealers claim. As if to prove the old adage that it’s an ill wind that blows no good, enthusiasts for the precious metal argue that financial shocks in [...]
The Brics idea has run its course
The leaders of the Brics economies meet today in Durban (South Africa was invited to join by Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2011). They do so at a time when their economic fortunes are faltering. Of the quintet, only China's economy is now growing at a greater rate than 5pc a year. In 2007, [...]
Does Larry Summers actually know what's talking about when it comes to the UK economy?
Larry Summers, the former US Treasury Secretary, made a good point on last night's BBC Newsnight in highlighting the apparent hypocrisy of George Osborne's latest package of measures to boost the mortgage market. Since guaranteeing a loan is in essence the same thing as actually providing it, what the UK Government is in fact doing [...]
Cyprus: tax haven status turns into a trap for British pensioners
Cyprus encouraged many British pensioners to retire to the Mediterranean island with a fixed 5pc tax rate in retirement and the ability to receive British State and company pensions without deduction of any tax. Under the terms of the tax treaty between the United Kingdom and Cyprus signed long before the credit crisis, pensioners [...]
EU migration has to be managed better, but overall, it has benefited the UK and Europe
Germany’s Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich put it well when he said of EU migration: If people in Germany feel that their openness is being abused and our welfare system is looted then there will be legitimate anger. In the UK, EU free movement is effectively one controversial issue, Europe, laid on top of an even [...]
Cyprus: they make a desert and call it peace
And the grand mufti of financial and economic policymaking wonder why people have lost all faith in them. This is what Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Fund, had to say overnight about the Cypriot settlement. “We believe the plan provides a durable and fully financed solution to the underlying problems facing Cyprus and [...]
Could Cyprus leave the euro but stay in the EU?
As I noted in my piece for the Sunday Telegraph, the crisis has turned Cyprus into a pawn in the game of geopolitical chess between the EU and its wider neighbourhood. In addition to its role as a Russian offshore financial centre, Cyprus is also at the crossroads of the Middle East and Europe. Amid [...]