From the Guardian this morning:   and   I have been saying that this was inevitable.  

Having done so there is only one reasonable response, to the IMF’s demand for stimulus and Osborne’s refusal to do it. And that’s “I (and others) told you so”. Long ago. And we’re all paying the price for that being ignored.

At long last Apple is receiving high profile attention for its tax avoidance, which is probably the biggest such activity in the world. As the FT reports this morning: US congressional investigators on Monday accused Apple of avoiding paying billions in taxes around the world by exploiting loopholes and using Irish subsidiaries that are not tax residents of any country. The Senate
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The FT reported late yesterday: Britain’s employees are feeling more insecure and under pressure at work than at any time in the past 20 years, a large-scale study of the workforce has found. For the first time, public sector workers are more worried than those in the private sector about losing their jobs. They are also
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The debate about the next election seems to be focussing on Europe, immigration, debt, deficit, cuts, welfare and the like. They may be important. But they all miss the big issue – which is that there is only one question of importance at the next election and no ons is addressing it because none of the mainstream
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Il gattopardo is (I understand) Italian for leopard. It’s important to appreciate this when reading this abstract from the Journal of the Macroeconomic Policy Institute: Thomas I. Palley Gattopardo economics: The crisis and the mainstream response of change that keeps things the same Abstract Gattopardo constitutes change that keeps things the same. Gattopardo is relevant for understanding the economics profession’s response to the financial crash of 2008. This
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This is from the FT this morning, by Steingrímur Sigfússon: Iceland’s response to the financial crisis has been taken as a model for how a country should react to a dramatic economic shock. However, international observers should also take note of our country’s recent election result. Despite guiding the country through a difficult but impressive recovery, the governing
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This table has just been published by the OECD and shows the “tax wedge” taken from employment earnings for all 34 OECD countries: The OECD say of this: Note then that this “wedge” includes employer’s national insurance – which most people do not appreciate is paid on their behalf. The UK is at 32.3%, well down the
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I believe Labour is moving sharply to the right, and very quickly. There’s talk of sticking to Tory spending limits despite the disaster that delivered in 1997. Deficit control is apparently vital, just when the economics of public debt and growth have been destroyed. Child poverty can no longer be tackled in the way it was, and
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