Mervyn King’s view on ‘the new politics’
Faisal Islam blogs on Mervyn King’s comments about the new Conservative/Liberal Democrat government
Faisal Islam has left Channel 4 News. This is an archive of his blogs.
Faisal Islam blogs on Mervyn King’s comments about the new Conservative/Liberal Democrat government
On the first full day of the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat government, Faisal Islam blogs that this is a hugely important 24 hours for economic policy.
There’s no objective evidence so far that the hung parliament hiatus is causing market panic. The single best indicator: demand to buy UK government debt, was tested in what could have been an unfortunately-timed debt auction at 1030 this morning.
On top of the decision to make around half a trillion euros available in loans and loan guarantees for Europe’s Mediterranean fiscal defences, probably the biggest factor was the Frankfurt based European Central Bank’s decision to buy eurozone government debt, writes Faisal Islam.
Team Europe: Financial Rescue, is what today’s events in Brussels were supposed to be. But tonight EU finance ministers are facing a race against time to have a package of support measures to underpin the euro before major markets open tonight. After acting too late on Greece, other indebted European nations started to feel the…
As Ken Clarke hints at a Cabinet position for Vince Cable and a possible deferrment of the Tories plans to cut the deficit, Faisal Islam asks: is this the shape of the Con-Lib alliance?
The announcement, on general election day, of an oil discovery off the Falklands could mark a momentous event for Britain, blogs Faisal Islam.
Faisal Islam blogs on the lessons from Germany that the political parties could learn from
The election in many ways is a lie. What Greece ‘s £94bn bailout is showing, and the reported views of the Bank of England governor too, is that Britain over the next two to three years will not resemble the picture of the country that was sold to you in this campaign.
Much of the market finally lost patience today with the umming ahhing, feet-dragging, and generalised incompetence of Europe’s multi-headed economic governance. We face an epic moment in world economics, every bit as critical as the decision to bailout Bear Stearns, and then not to bailout Lehman Brothers. “Sheer panic” was the reaction of one…
So there we have it. Clarity, honesty, and candour on Day 22 of the election campaign. Not at any of the party political press conferences. No, it’s been left to the trusty holders of the spending shield of truth: the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Faisal Islam blogs on how today’s GDP figure will have a big role to play in next week’s leaders’ debate on the economy – and possibly the party campaigns.
We knew that the deficit was massive. Today we got confirmation that last year Britain borrowed a peacetime record, just below 11 per cent of national income. It is a mammoth sum, the sort of fiscal carnage only normally wrought by worldwide war. The news today, however, was that last year’s deficit ended up slightly…
Faisal Islam blogs on the rise in unemployment to over 2.5m just two weeks ahead of the general election.
Faisal Islam blogs on the IMF report into making banks pay their own way