As I speak Kenneth Clarke is saying that the foreign exchange markets will reject the pre-Budget report, which he says the country cannot afford.
That’s absurd: doing nothing is a way to guarantee massive losses for us all.
Yes, this is going to be very expensive. Yes the borrowing is going to be dear. Yes, that gives [...]
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There are two possible reactions to the pre-budget report.
There is the drivel that George Osborne is speaking as I write: an absurd and economically illiterate response to the pressures of a global recession.
There is a more reasoned reaction.
I have already criticised VAT cuts: I stand by that analysis. I am afraid that this is the [...]
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15.15 This is my ‘off the cuff’ reaction to what is being said, as it happens.
I’ll update it regularly as the afternoon progresses.
15.35 Bank losses will be $3 trillion.
15.40 FSA will look at accounting rules
15.42 Crown Dependencies impose cost without making payment to Exchequer - regulation will be looked at and Commission is looking at [...]
If it is true that VAT is to be cut by 2.5% to 15% in today’s pre-Budget report this is a mistake.
The cost is reported to be £12.5 billion, a proportionate part of the £84 billion the tax was meant to raise this year. This will make such a cut a major part of any [...]
If this is true then Alastair Darling will throw a small crumb in the right direction today:
Chancellor Alistair Darling is due to announce in his pre-Budget report he intends to raise the top rate of income tax in the future, the BBC learns.
BBC political editor Nick Robinson said the move would break a Labour pledge [...]
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I’ve made my hopes for the Pre-Budget Report pretty clear: infrastructure led job creation, support for those unemployed, help for those with mortgage difficulties, and investment in the green economy.
It looks likely that Alastair Darling will offer VAT cuts: a useless consumer stimulus that will only create jobs in China and which shows he apparently [...]
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The Green Party and the Green New Deal Group published their pre-budget report today.
I have contributed to this, although I am not a member of the Green Party. As I say in my foreword to it:
This is a package for the short term that makes sense for the long term; a package where the debt [...]
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The World Bank has announced:
12 November 2008 - The World Bank has issued its first bond where the proceeds will be directly invested in climate change-related projects. The bond is the first product of a wider Bank effort, in collaboration with large institutional investors, to direct large-scale institutional money to tackling climate change.
The Bank has [...]
I have the following letter in the London Evening Standard today:
George Osborne is wrong in his fears for sterling - national economies are not like households. You do not have to balance the books. As Keynes showed, in a recession when inflation is likely, government spending creates a multiplier effect, especially if you can keep [...]
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The Barclays Bank fiasco, of it accepting an offer of funding from Middle East investors at an interest rate of 14%, at a tax cost to the UK government of £120 million a year, all as an alternative to lower cost, better term UK government finance, is astonishing. So too is the fact that they [...]
