The IMF’s new report on the UK is totally contradictory in its prescriptions. The fact is conventional economics has no clue about how to deal with the 21st century economy. Listen to ‘The IMF is out of ideas’ on Audioboo

Time and again I am asked to believe that bankers have changed their spots and that we live in a new era of ethical financial services. Time and again I have difficulty doing so, and for good reason. I still see th UK’s tax havens resisting calls for public registers of companies. Secrecy remains top
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Polly Toynbee makes a call for tax to be centre stage in the next general election,and thereafter, in the Guardian today. Of itself this is not a surprise, and nor is the fact that Polly quotes me, amongst others, surprising either. But some of those others are more surprising. Polly quotes a Sheffield firm of
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Postscript to Friday:

Steve Richards argues in the Guardian this morning that Ed Miliband may be right, and that ideas could be the factor that determines the outcome of the next general election. This does not always happen, of course. The cult of personality is powerful. There are, however, moments when ideas can be pivotal. 1945 was one.
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David Cameron famously argued before the 2010 general election that not a single front line service would be impacted by his programme of austerity. It was, of course, a blatant lie and I have no doubt he knew it was a lie, but I do wonder if he had any idea by how much he
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According to my family there are better things to do than blog this morning. I am succumbing to the wisdom of my crowd. I may be back later. And there again, maybe not.

Before anyone gets excited about GDP returning to 2008 levels (as is likely to be announced tomorrow) can I refer to this table issued by the ONS on 2 July: The point is an obvious one: even if the absolute level of GDP has returned to the 2008 level GDP per head has not. It
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One of the questions I was asked on Twitter last night was how to spot a tax haven. There is no easy answer to this. One way is to decide for yourself after reading the book Ronen Palan, Christian Chavagneux and I wrote on the subject. This is now a little out of date but available
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