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Jon Snow
Electric Picnic. It might better be termed the eclectic picnic – a totally amazing event out beyond the verdant turf of the golf courses and the famous Curragh race course in the heart of Ireland. Ostensibly a folk and rock-fest starring everyone from Brian Wilson to Florence and the Machine, the Picnic proved much more…
Size does matter to the G20 finance ministers. We know this in relation to the extent of the recovery. Some feel recovery has bedded down sufficiently to allow talk of ‘exit strategies’ from the extraordinary stimulus seen around the world. Others, including the chancellor, fear that “the biggest single risk to recovery is that people…
Like a Greek Oracle, Mervyn King has divined some encouraging signs at the quarterly Bank of England assessment of the UK economy. But the bulk of the statistical soothsaying was pretty bleak. The banking system is still in a bad way and it may take some years for it to be “weaned off very large…
Rising out of the carnage of the credit storm is the new gleaming headquarters of the titan of post crisis American banking. Goldman Sachs has emerged richer and more powerful than ever, but the Goldman glow is being replaced by a Goldman glare. It has without doubt been the most significant shift I have noticed…
“I think the banks have pulled one. They maybe didn’t plan on it, but looking back it’s quite an amazing steal… “The banks got an amazing deal last September, they were rescued by the taxpayer, and then refloated themselves giving the taxpayer very little of the upside and now they are going to have very…
America’s banks rake in bumper profits just six months after they were on the ropes, begging for government bailouts. Faisal Islam went to the US to find out what the legacy of the banking crisis is.
By the time you are reading this I hope to be supping on mozzarella di bufala in a medieval Italian hilltop town full of churches stuffed with paintings by Renaissance masters. The reality will probably be that I shall be going through umpteen security scanners along with some 3000 other journalists queuing for the G8…
Post-meltdown Mansion House was always going to be a little different from the traditional orgy of self-congratulation, backslapping, and an ever lighter regulatory touch. But in the end the bruising speech came from the governor of the Bank of England rather than the chancellor of the exchequer.
The housing boom returned in May and it’s difficult to know whether we should grin, cry or just laugh.
It’s a supreme irony that on this day of Whitehall whirlwind, there’s actually been the first hard evidence that the economy might be on the turn. After the worst recession for at least four decades, one closely followed indicator is suggesting the economy actually grew, in May, for the first time in 14 months
Jon Snow
A political crisis This is a political spectacle none of us has ever seen before. The government is reshuffling itself. Hazel Blears has just shuffled herself out of the Cabinet. She’d have been fired anyway over her second homery and non-payment of capital gains tax. Two other ministers, one of them another woman, are expected…
The UK financial system was bailed out by the taxpayer to the tune of £500bn in 2008. Economics Editor Faisal Islam analyses the government’s response as it pumped billions of pounds into the city.
It was the inflation forecast that wasn’t. The Bank of England still seemed more concerned with deflationary tendencies in the economy. And Mervyn King appeared ultra-cautious about any sort of forecast. At one point the governor of the Bank of England even implored the assembled economics hacks to help him explain to the country just…
Playing the ‘blame game’ is mostly viewed as a contemptuous pursuit. But a credible version of Credit Crunch Cluedo will be vital to our long-term prospects. After the dotcom boom, instead of watching the banking system’s ever more elaborate risk-multiplication ruses, the DTI and Treasury pumped out reports about how to copy the enterprising success…
Yet more indications today of Britain’s radically altered political landscape. Some irony that the Labour left’s long-desired aim to cancel a raft of multibillion pound defence contracts will, in all probability, be realised by a Conservative chancellor responding to the costs of a crisis in capitalism. I can’t get across enough how much this crisis…