Chancellor George Osborne makes a statement to the Commons on the Irish bailout.
A huge risk that’s hard to justify – or a viable strategy to restore balance to the economy? Two leading economists offer their views to Channel 4 News.
Jon Snow
A financier whom I know calls me over the weekend about the Irish financial crisis. “Jon”, he says, “I trust you know that 80 per cent of the Irish banking crisis was caused by a handful of property developers taking massive punts on the housing and construction market?”
In the wake of the Bank of England comments to Channel 4 News that savers should eat into their cash, Faisal Islam blogs about the importance of the Deputy Governor’s words.
The day after the Bank of England’s Deputy Governor told Channel 4 News that savers should be eating into their capital we hear from one expert on how best to preserve your pot of money.
Prudent savers are being sacrificed at the altar of feckless spenders – at least temporarily – and that is how it has to be in the current financial climate, the Bank of England’s Charlie Bean tells Economics Editor Faisal Islam.
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So the Bank of England has downgraded its central prognosis for UK growth by almost one percentage point in 2011 – from 3.4 per cent in May to about 2.5 per cent. And its central inflation forecast has nearly doubled for 2011 from 1.4 per cent to around 2.8 per cent. So both main gauges…
Faisal Islam blogs on how the banks still face long-term funding problems, despite unveiling big profits this week.
The coalition Treasury has a big macroeconomic strategy. Borrowing slashed so that economy-wide interest rates can stay lower for longer. It is how they have made the argument to middle England for the spending and tax pain announced yesterday. Unfortunate, then, that within hours of the ‘austerity budget’, the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee…
The Bank of England Governor tonight confirmed that Hector Sants, the chief executive of the Financial Services Authority, has been persuaded to stay in office. “I am absolutely delighted that Hector Sants has agreed to remain at the FSA and then move to the Bank to become the first chief executive of the new prudential…
The Bank of England will tonight become the most powerful institution in Britain. To understand what is to happen at tonight’s Mansion House speech, you have to go back a year to last year’s Mansion House event. Then, with the recession and the financial crisis still raging, the Governor of the Bank of England and…
The question is: at what point does temporary become more enduring? If VAT goes up again on 22 June, that will provide another boost to CPI inflation, writes economics editor Faisal Islam.
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.
As george Osborne prepares to make a keynote speech tomorrow, Faisal Islam blogs on whether it’s time for a re-think on Britain’s 13 year long target to keep inflation at two per cent.