Faisal Islam has left Channel 4 News. This is an archive of his blogs.
Cutting rates again to a new record was discussed but there are fears for the impact on banks, building societies and the normal functioning of money markets. No, all roads lead to more quantitative easing. But not just any old QE.
If correct the UK economy will have grown more slowly in 2011 than 2010. The IMF’s forecast is well below the 1.7 per cent currently used by the government, writes Faisal Islam.
Eurozone finance ministers should perhaps have been a little more respectful of Tim Geithner, writes Economics Editor Faisal Islam.
Euro crisis, poor jobs figures, massive national strikes, on top of high inflation squeezing living standards – Economics Editor Faisal Islam reports on the political response to the economic bad weather.
General strikes for November set to be discussed at TUC conference on Wednesday, Economics Editor Faisal Islam learns.
These reforms are momentous, and quite elegant – in theory. The lesson of a decade or two of banking dominance in Britain’s political economy is that they will get their way in watering down the detail of this proposal, particularly in the many years it will take for legislation and enforcement
Christine Lagarde is quite some diplomat. So Madame Lagarde has not quite been saying what Ed Balls has been saying she has been saying. But nor is she giving the ringing endorsement received from this organisation as recently as June.
Faisal Islam on the fall-out from the downgrading of Britain’s growth figures
Faisal Islam pores over Alistair Darling’s memoir and finds some extraordinary revelations about the banks which still have relevance today.
Amid the tumult of re-escalating eurozone crisis, the G7 meets in Marseille on Friday. Just five years ago that would have been seen as a sign for comfort. The finance ministers of the world’s seven most advanced “industrialised” (deindustrialised, surely?) nations meeting to iron out a common cooperative response to the world’s economic problems.
Channel 4 News Economics Editor Faisal Islam asks whether bad news for the economy could end up being good news for the banks?
“The first time I met Steve Jobs he hastily ended the interview.” – Faisal Islam blogs about the man behind the Apple, and what it means for the company now.
Faisal Islam asks if the Chancellor has played a blinder on the Switzerland tax haven – or if he’s wasted an opportunity.
Looking at the stock market over the past year, all you see is a money-printing asset price boom lasting 9 months that disappeared when QE stopped. It was a fake recovery. A sugar high.
So overall, an attempt to centralise decisionmaking over tax, spend and borrowing between France and Germany, as a prelude to doing it across Europe. Which leads me to the Eurobond, the much vaunted silver bullet awaited by many in the markets, the Italians, and are very own George Osborne.