The FT is reporting today that the bankers’ bonus tax will generate £2.5 billion in revenue for the Treasury – nearly three times more than the Treasury itself expected.  Interestingly, those wise people around the Adam Smith Institute predicted that the tax would be avoided making the policy a meaningless gesture.  Or as ASI guru [...]

Filed under: Tax | 2 Comments »

In a speech on Monday night, Peter Mandelson proposed a radical overhaul of the rules surrounding corporate acquisitions in the UK.  The speech was very precise on the proposals being considered:

Filed under: Corporate governance | 2 Comments »

Rewind almost three years and the trade union movement was embroiled in a bitter media spat with the private equity industry. In a portent of something much bigger, private equity firms were accused of playing fast and loose with high levels of debt to buy up companies they neither understood nor cared for in order [...]

Filed under: Financial crisis, Private equity, Tax | 1 Comment »

It seems George Osborne was a bit hasty to claim that: “we now have a consensus of economic opinion aligned with the Conservatives saying that dealing with the deficit is essential to create jobs and sustain the recovery”.  His comment followed the widely publicised publication of a letter from twenty economists in The Sunday Times.  The Financial [...]

Filed under: Economics, Public spending | 1 Comment »

There’s a very, very old joke about a man in a hot air balloon who runs out of fuel and suddenly has to ditch in the middle of a farm.  Unhurt, he brushes himself off and calls out to a passing rambler asking if he can enlighten him as to his whereabouts.  The rambler thinks for a [...]

Filed under: Economics, Financial crisis, Monetary policy, Public services, Public spending | 5 Comments »

Striking, I thought, that those ferociously bright people who work at Goldman Sachs and deserve every penny of their multi-million pound bonuses as a reward for their vast intellects haven’t worked out that if you rig an online poll using the same IP address over and over again you might just get caught.  Maybe they believed [...]

Filed under: Transactions tax | 1 Comment »

The right-wing bloggers are slowly beginning to lay into the campaign for a Robin Hood Tax which was launched today.  Two early starters have taken the usual patronising tone describing the idea as a “fairytale” and ”lunatic“.

Filed under: Transactions tax | 11 Comments »

Back when cuts mania was all the rage during the conference season of 2009, only the TUC, others on the left and serious commentators like Martin Wolf argued that cuts came with major economic consequences.  The TUC argued particularly strongly that to start measures to address the deficit when the economy was still fragile threatened [...]

Filed under: Politics, Public services, Public spending, Recession | 4 Comments »

One day we might get a proper public debate about why the UK economy remains so anemic after six quarters of shrinkage.  And, more worryingly, is  now starting to lag badly behind some other equivalent economies.  For me there were four big mistakes made which need close investigation and which we need to work out [...]

Filed under: Financial crisis, Labour market, Monetary policy, Recession | 3 Comments »

Before the banks start trying to reassure their shareholders that they’ll find ways around Obama’s proposals, it was interesting to hear the Today programme’s interview with a City chap this morning. He admits that there is a sense that “there will be no place for the banks to hide at the end of all this” (quoted [...]

Filed under: Financial crisis | No Comments »