The IMF reveals Britain’s shadow fiscal stimulus
The IMF Fiscal monitor reveals that George Osborne is borrowing money after all – but he’s not calling it stimulus spending, since it falls within his deficit reduction plan.
Faisal Islam
Faisal Islam has left Channel 4 News. This is an archive of his blogs.
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Official: since the spending review, a shrinking economy (just).
I’ve spent the day buried in spreadsheets and statistics looking at insights for our C4 Jobs Report. In the course of that I got a closer look at the GDP numbers released as part of the Quarterly National Accounts a fortnight ago, writes Faisal Islam.
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Is the tycoon tax threatening the big society?
Why tax changes proposed in the budget could undo the good work of Big Society Capital – the body launched to fund social investment.
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Spain: the Brussels budget ‘suicide pact’
As Easter approaches in Andalusia, Faisal Islam visits the Eurozone’s biggest headache.
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Spain announces ‘most austere’ cuts ever
Spain sets out deep budget cuts which its treasury minister has called ‘the most austere’ in the country’s democratic history, despite fierce popular resistance.
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Spain’s ‘indignado’ youth now angry at attempts to help them
Overqualified, no jobs, and the worst economic year since world war two. What now for Spain’s young?
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‘No growth Britain’ looks concerning even from pained Spain
In other words, taking into account, alternate upswings and downswings, the UK has not grown since October 2010, also the month of the Spending Review. That’s right, ZERO growth in 5 quarters, 15 months, for which the Coalition’s original deficit reduction plan had pencilled in three per cent.
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Osborne’s simple Granny tax alibi gets complicated
“What is clear though, is that the Office of Tax Simplification does not offer much of an alibi for the change announced on Wednesday.”
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Budget 2012: tax avoidance and the 50p rate
The fact remains that the decision on the 50p rate was made on the basis of one year’s highly distorted data. In some ways it was set up to fail. Many economists will argue that it was always going to.
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Emma Harrison’s tax bill casts doubt on 50p tax analysis
Exclusive: Former A4e boss Emma Harrison was one of those who took advantage of a lag between the announcement and the start of the 50p top tax rate, Channel 4 News learns.
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Will HMRC have smoking gun against the 50p? Impossible
Faisal’s done the maths: George Osborne can’t justify his claim that the 50p tax rate isn’t generating money.
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How scrapping national pay rates might save lives
Faisal Islam on how scrapping national pay bargaining might save lives, and why it will be rather difficult.
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Bad news for Osborne as Britain is put on negative outlook
A second ratings agency has effectively lowered their assessment of Britain’s creditworthiness, just days before an important Budget.
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Good news for Merseyside jobs – and for Michael Heseltine’s legacy
Lord Heseltine received the freedom of the City of Liverpool, on the day that the creation of thousands of jobs was announced. But all the main political parties seem to be fighting over the Heseltine inheritance of industrial activism.
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Rail re-privatisation coming down the track?
Faisal Islam believes the flawed separation of train and track in the privatisation of BR is set to be rolled back.
