The budget debate on Channel 4 tonight was fascinating. Vince Cable won on honesty and obvious integrity, especially when refusing to give commitments. Alastair darling hit Osborne hard on NIC and he had no defence at all – especially as he couldn’t defend now spending savings he ridiculed last week Cable and Darling both shoed
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As has been recently blogged by the Tax Justice Network, the Conservatives recently entered into active dialogue on tax, transparency and development issues for the first time when they participated in a Christian Aid meeting on these issues. This was a welcome move. Now Christian Aid have followed this up with a press release which
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I have been challenged to say why I have problems with what is known as the Washington Consensus. As it happens to suit my own work programme to record such concerns at this moment I’ve done so in table form below, taking each of the ten broad sets of recommendations that John Williamson identified as
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Progress on Exchange of Information in the Caribbean – News – Bahamas Financial Services Board. The Bahamas want to celebrate: The Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development announced today that Anguilla, St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines have become the 23rd, 24th and 25th jurisdictions to move into the category of
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FT.com / UK / Politics & policy – Tories pledge to cut national insurance. David Cameron will put tax cuts at the heart of the Conservative election campaign on Monday, responding to his party’s narrowing opinion poll lead with a multi-billion-pound pledge to cut national insurance. The Conservative leader will commit to partially reversing a
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FT.com / Financials – Negligence actions against auditors rise. The FT notes: The number of professional negligence lawsuits filed against accountants last year because of the credit crunch was higher than the total brought in the previous five years. Research by Reynolds Porter Chamberlain, the law firm, found 13 large High Court suits were brought
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Tim Worstall is a very strange man. As far as I can see he’s written 13 blogs about me – in the past fortnight. I call that an unhealthy obsession. And despite his clearly being my biggest fan and #1 cheerleader he also gets me quite wildly wrong. Take this on the Washington consensus about
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Letters: Better routes to economic recovery | UK news | The Guardian . From today’s letters page in the Guardian, and unbeknownst to the Green New Deal group comes the following letter of support (my emphasis added): In the current fragile state of the British economy, the government was right to resist demands from budget
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Fiscal Policy Challenges in the Post-Crisis World, Speech by John Lipsky, First Deputy Managing Director, At the China Development Forum. The IMF is reporting to the G20 on measures needed to solve the world recession very soon. The man in charge is John Lipsky, its deputy managing director. And last week he said in China
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