UK quarterly growth revised upwards

The growth in the quarter and the upwards revision to the figures owed much to an 8.5 per cent jump in construction output – in one quarter the construction sector made up more than half the ground it lost during the recession.

That pace of growth is unlikely to continue. Looking at the economy through measures of spending, the picture looks less rosy. A boost from stock building is probably temporary and the weak pound is still failing to deliver the anticipated boost to exports ...

FT  27 Aug 2010

UK economy shows fastest growth in nearly a decade

"The rebound in manufacturing we've seen over the past nine months appears to be feeding into tentative signs of a recovery in investment which, if continued, should deliver the much-needed rebalancing of the economy," said Lee Hopley, chief economist at the manufacturers' organisation EEF. "However, the strong bounce in overall growth remains reliant on consumer spending and restocking, both of which are likely to diminish in the second half of the year, placing greater importance on investment and a pick-up in trade." ...

Guardian  27 Aug 2010

UK economic growth overshadowed by US data

... future growth will not only be hit by government cuts and VAT hikes - but it largely relies on US economic recovery ...

[David] Blanchflower told Channel 4 News that policy makers will respond to Mr Bernanke's comments "and do exactly the opposite to what they are doing in the UK - put more stimulus in, not less ... if the world economy slows then these spending cuts are really going to impact growth. And the markets actually care more about growth than they do about deficits – so if the UK economy starts to slow and you start to cut that's very bad."

C4 News  27 Aug 2010    

Economic growth: what the economists say

Fed Ready to Dig Deeper to Aid Growth

The right type of inflation is OK, declares Bank of England

Immigration cap will devastate UK companies

Today's research suggests that fears of a dramatic decline in the skills of British graduates and school-leavers are driving employers to look abroad.

Of those questioned, 42% felt the literacy skills of British graduates had fallen over the past five years, compared with just 6% who said they had improved.

For numeracy the corresponding figures were 35% and 5%, and for communication and interpersonal skills 34% and 19%.

There was a similar pattern when it came to British school-leavers.

Many firms are also looking to recruit from abroad, with one in six saying they will bring in migrant workers in the third quarter of this year.

Gerwyn Davies, public policy adviser at CIPD and author of the report, said the government faced a "complex juggling act".

"The proposed introduction of a migration cap comes at a time when many employers are still struggling to fill skilled vacancies despite the high unemployment rate," he added.

"The training of local or British workers to fill skilled jobs currently occupied by migrant workers will not happen overnight." ...

"Companies want to hire local people, but they often have trouble finding local residents with the basic skills, drive and attitude needed to help the business succeed," said Adam Marshall, director of policy at the British Chambers of Commerce.

He added that the "unintended consequences" of the cap could be widespread ...

Observer  22 Aug 2010    Global Labour Market    Tory Education 'Reform'

The cap on immigration cannot hold

Mergers and acquisitions mania disrupts bankers' summer breaks

Mergers and acquisitions this year represent about 35% of global investment banking fees, still below a 10-year average of 38%, according to Guardian calculations based on ThomsonReuters data.

The sector peaked in 2008, when M&A accounted for 48% of all investment banking fees.

Bankers usually charge between 1% and 3% of the value of deal worth less than $500m, while the fee is down to between 0.8% and 1% for deals between $500m and $1bn, and to less than 1% for the biggest transactions, worth more than $1bn.

Banks are also turning back to corporate clients after courting national governments as one of their main sources of income last year.

Multibillion-pound sovereign bond issues by high-deficit countries, such as Britain, the US, Greece and Spain proved juicy earners over the past 12 months.

As countries have already bailed out banks and rescued the near-collapsed financial system, government bond deals have almost halved this year to $851bn, down from a whopping $1.4tn over the same period last year, the data shows.

Banks prefer corporate clients to high-profile government deals, which often bring more prestige than real income.

More focus on companies and less attention to governments and distressed deals has lifted investment banking fees by 53% in Britain, the data shows ...

Guardian  20 Aug 2010

Banking Commission    Fractional Reserve Banking    Is capitalism the only game in town?

Merger mania predicted as cash-rich firms stalk takeover targets

Mergers and Acquisitions

UK borrowing rises less than expected

Both the BBC and the Guardian offer misleading headlines.

Borrowing has not dropped, it has gone up by less than forecasted. A very different outcome.

Net borrowing was £3.8bn in July, less than the £5.25bn forecast by economists and well down on the £6.1bn of borrowing in the same month last year.

Although it is only four months into the 2010-11 tax year, if borrowing continues at its current pace the deficit appears on course to undershoot the Budget forecast of £149bn.

July is one of the key months in the year for corporation tax receipts, and these jumped 38 per cent compared with a year ago to £8.5bn in a sign that businesses’ profits are improving ...

FT  19 Aug 2010

UK economy

Consider three mysteries discussed in the latest minutes of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee ...

First, inflation has been stubbornly and unexpectedly high – above the targeted 2 per cent rate for 41 of the last 50 months.

A 20 per cent fall in the trade-weighted value of the pound between 2007 and 2009 provides only a very partial explanation.

Second, trade. Currency devaluations are supposed to spur exports and domestic production that can replace more expensive imports.

The weak sterling has done neither.

Excluding oil, UK exports were only 2 per cent higher in the second quarter of 2010 than a year earlier, while imports rose 11 per cent ...

FT  18 Aug 2010    Back to 1931 with George Osborne

UK public finances begin to improve

UK public sector borrowing drops in July

Coalition turns down heat under energy suppliers

Competition? Not with the neoliberals in charge!

The Coalition Government has shelved plans for an independent inquiry into the £25bn-a-year energy industry amid accusations of profiteering on electricity and gas.

Before the general election, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats repeatedly criticised Labour for failing to tackle prices charged by the Big Six suppliers.

Both the opposition parties demanded an inquiry by the Competition Commission.

An inquiry would have the power to reform the industry, encourage new entrants to break the hold of players such as British Gas and EDF on 99 per cent of the market and, potentially, impose price caps.

However four months into the Coalition Government, no inquiry has been called and the Department of Energy and Climate Change confirmed last night that it has no plans to refer the industry to the Competition Commission ...

Homes in fuel poverty – defined as spending 10 per cent or more of their income on fuel – have trebled in five years to around 6.6 million.

Figures released in December showed that during the cold winter of 2008/09, “excess winter mortality” jumped by 49 per cent to 36,700, sending an extra 10,000 pensioners to early graves.

Meanwhile, profits have surged at the Big Six – British Gas, EDF, Eon, Npower, Scottish & Southern and Scottish Power – and the firms are accused of failing to pass on significant falls in wholesale prices ...

Consumer groups condemned the failure to act, saying customers needed a thorough investigation of the industry, whose numbers of major suppliers has shrunk through takeovers and mergers from 20 at privatisation in the early 1990s to 6 now ...

Independent  18 Aug 2010

Corporate State    Economic Democracy    Energy Policy: The Market Failure    Pawns or Players?

Cameron warned over cuts to winter fuel allowance

Ministers consider cuts to winter fuel allowance

Winter fuel payment cuts to hit millions of pensioners

German business culture should be a model for our own

Germany's economic bounce-back is testament to its respect for manufacturing and a backbone of small- and medium-sized firms ...

The backbone of the German economy is its Mittelstand – a core of small and medium-sized firms, many of which have existed for generations and have proved their durability and resilience.

In the mid-noughties, I met a number of them in the industrial region of Nordrhein-Westfalen, and they were rightly sceptical about the UK's apparent economic miracle and about debt-based Anglo-Saxon capitalism in general ...

Observer  15 Aug 2010    

The right type of inflation is OK, declares Bank of England

Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, virtually admitted at his Inflation Report press conference this morning that the Bank now considers elevated levels of inflation to be perfectly alright provided they don’t give rise to second round effects – rising inflationary expectations and matching wage inflation.

Would policy have been any different over the past three years, he was asked, had the Bank known that inflation was going to come in much higher than the Bank was forecasting? Probably not, he conceded. His justification was that elevated levels of inflation have been largely the result of a series of “price shocks” which lie outside the Bank’s control, such as higher energy and food prices.

These shocks were masking a much more benign picture. High unemployment and abundant spare capacity in the economy would keep second round inflationary effects at bay. Since wages are for the time being significantly lagging inflation, the effect is a big squeeze on disposable incomes. This type of inflation can therefore be seen, paradoxically, as deflationary. It is one of the mechanisms by which a real reduction in disposable incomes is being brought about.

Telegraph  11 Aug 2010    Reserve Army    Well-Being

The gathering storm: Britain's faltering economy

The Bank's warnings add to signs that the UK will soon suffer from the worst of all worlds on almost every main economic indicator – high unemployment coupled with inflation; depressed growth and house prices; and a widening divergence between the better-off regions and those, such as the Midlands, which have been hit hardest in the downturn.

Public spending cuts threaten to throttle revivals in industrial centres such as Coventry and Newcastle, where government agencies and schemes also provide many jobs.

So while the whole nation will suffer a squeeze in its living standards over the next 12 months – thanks to minimal wage rises, tax hikes and soaring food and petrol prices – the most disadvantaged households in the most distressed regions are set to suffer the greatest pain.

And, even though the latest figures on unemployment show a stabilising total just shy of 2.5 million, an additional 1.5 million are in temporary or part-time work because they cannot find a full-time job.

The numbers of long-term unemployed are also up sharply; 796,000 Britons have been without work for more than a year, and 313,000 for over two years.

Many economists believe that a headline figure of 3 million jobless next year is a growing possibility ...

Ind  11 Aug 2010        

It's good news that house prices are falling

According to Halifax data, house prices dropped 23 per cent from their peak in August 2007 to the recent trough in April 2009, but following last year's second-half recovery, are now just 16 per cent below what were widely acknowledged to be ludicrously inflated levels ...

The problem with the British housing market is not that we all aspire to own property. That is perfectly sensible.

The problem is that we sometimes forget why we want to own our own homes.

sevendeuce
Today 10:30 AM
Recommended by 27 people

We really are in a cleft stick here. For society, and particularly family life, to work properly we need a typical family dwelling to cost about three times the average wage in the locality... so that one person in full time work can house and support a family.

Before you laugh, that was the typical relationship of house prices to incomes for much of the decades until the 80s.

However, to acheive this level of price would need a total meltdown in house prices rather just slight fluctuations.

And such a meltdown would ruin anybody who has bought in the last decade (or more).

For the moment we seem to be stuck with a situation in which young (and some not so young) people with quite respectable white collar jobs are priced out of home ownership.

Telegraph  11 Aug 2010    Ponzi Housing Market

Market Drop Signals Fears About Global Recovery

BoE warns UK recovery will be weaker than hoped

Speed up energy reforms, CBI warns ministers

Launching a report, No Time To Lose: Deciding Britain's Energy Future, the CBI says that without greater clarity, Britain risks missing out on as much as £150bn of private sector investment in low-carbon infrastructure.

As part of the report, the CBI is calling on the Government to tackle delays in planning systems, to speed up the development of carbon capture and storage technology, and to provide more detail on electricity market reform and its renewable energy policy.

The Government should have the measures in place by February next year, the lobby group adds ...

Last month, the Engineering Employers' Federation (EEF) said Britain faced an unprecedented combination of energy challenges over the next decade and needed to invest billions of pounds in infrastructure and manage the risks associated with growing dependence on imported gas.

Accepting that public money is unlikely to be forthcoming for what it describes as some of the most "ambitious and costly" targets in the world, the EEF, like the CBI, urged ministers to act to ensure planning permission and tax regimes facilitate private investment ...

Independent  09 Aug 2010    Eating the Future

Greener, cheaper and accountable

CBI: Decision Time

All new homes to run on green power by 2016

The ripple effect of well-intended energy policies

We are running out of time to agree a strategy for closing the energy gap over the next decade, particularly with the demanding environmental targets we have set ...

The immediate reaction was anxiety that his lukewarm support for nuclear power – the flipside of his determination that renewables must play a larger part in Britain's energy sector – might damage the chances of investment in that sector.

And now the renewables sector is voicing its concerns too, specifically about Mr Huhne's narrow focus on wind power.

Such concerns were crystallised yesterday in the announcement by Drax that it is reconsidering its plans for a very sizeable expansion of biomass use.

The company wants to spend several billion pounds building three new power stations that will be fuelled entirely by biomass.

But though it is pleased that Mr Huhne now proposes to increase the subsidies available to the biomass sector, the fact that he also plans to review his policies in 2013 gives Drax a headache.

Its new plants will not even be completed by then and could prove to be expensive white elephants if energy policy changes adversely ...

Independent  04 Aug 2010    

Energy plans will 'reduce UK's reliance on fossil fuels'

Takeover code tweaks won't affect corporate behaviour

It's called 'Standortkokurrenz' - a race to the bottom - and leads to
a growing 'reserve army' of both unemployed, and unemployable.

First-rate set of blogs, btw!

... tweaking the takeover code will not make any substantial difference to corporate behaviour in the UK.

Policymakers should focus instead on the bigger picture in their efforts to encourage rising levels of new business investment, and a greater focus on organic as opposed to acquired growth.

Their first step should be to find ways to promote and encourage long-term equity ownership.

Pension funds and insurance companies have been net sellers of UK equities for years – defined benefit pension funds now have less than a quarter of their assets in UK shares. As willing sellers, they tend to welcome takeover bids with open arms.

Regulatory and tax changes could help to check this trend, and provide much needed sources of new capital for industry.

Finally, the overall business environment is what ultimately determines where companies choose to invest and locate.

If the UK is not competitive in areas like skills, infrastructure and tax, then business activity will over time migrate overseas whatever the rules that apply to takeover battles.

Make the UK the most attractive place in the world in which to invest, and everything else will follow.

Guardian  28 July 2010

Santander set to win battle for high-street domination

Mergers and Acquisitions

British Gas warns of rising energy bills as profits double

British Gas made pre-tax profits on selling electricity and gas to homes of £585m for the first six months of the year, up 98% on last year.

The coldest winter in 30 years saw demand increase by 8% while the company also enjoyed bigger margins because energy costs had been lower.

Profits were also boosted by attracting 223,000 new customers during the period.

The company expects to make much smaller profits in the second half of the year because of higher energy costs.

Group profits, which include Centrica's upstream gas production, electricity generation and its home energy services businesses, increased operating profits 65% to £1.56bn.

Centrica says it needs to maintain profits in order to contribute to the £200bn investment in new energy infrastructure over the next decade.

It said it would invest £1.4bn this year, which includes £400m on acquisitions.

NE555
28 Jul 2010, 9:47AM

Decoded, The City wants more profits and hence dividends to feed the bonuses.

No specific mention of investment in gas storage to improve the Country’s energy security.

Skim the customers for investment capital, dont go to the City ( I thought that was the whole idea of privatising, to raise capital in the City for investment, hang on, no it was the excuse)

£400M in takeovers, so lots of fees to the City.

City wins again, customers screwed, bonuses to the parasites all round.

Guardian  28 July 2010

British Gas: 95% profit rise forecast, but no cut in prices

• Estimated profits from domestic energy sales to hit £583m
• Wholesale energy prices have halved from last year's peak ...

Audrey Gallacher, head of energy policy at Consumer Focus, said:

"Big returns for energy firms are likely to be on the cards as profit margins have been boosted by low wholesale costs over the last year. The main question now is whether small rises in wholesale prices will be used to justify price hikes for customers this winter. If so, consumers will want to know why prices continue to go up like a rocket in a rising wholesale market and fall like a feather when costs go down, as we've seen in the last couple of years."

Observer  25 July 2010    

UK businesses face steep rise in energy bills

Big freeze gives British Gas 98% profits hike

Time for a credit squeeze on big takeover bids

... if Osborne and Cable want to ease credit, and prevent firms from gearing up too much, they should look at whether limiting the amount of debt a predator can raise to fund a bid would be a sensible alternative.

Many of the bankers and brokers I've talked to about this like the idea of some sort of limit on what proportion of takeover funding should be debt; around 25 per cent of the total purchase price seemed to be the consensus.

Such a restriction should certainly be considered as part of the City's review into how the machinery of takeovers can be made tougher following Kraft's successful bid for Cadbury, which caused such an outcry.

It also fits with what Cable told me in a recent interview that the real issue to be investigated is not whether a predator is foreign, that misses the point, but whether takeovers are value-enhancing.

As he said, in most cases they are not – and it's going to be fascinating to see how much support Standard Life gets for its brave stand against a bid for Tompkins.

Making firms fund their acquisitions with more of their own capital would be one way of ensuring that shareholders really understand the financing and the possible dilution ...

Independent  25 July 2010    Fractional Reserve Banking

Celebrating the boom? Me neither

... let's not OD on the GDP figures.

Over in the United States they had a similar experience – an unbelievably strong comeback from a near Depression.

But as soon as the official subsidies and support were peeled away – the scrappage scheme, a subsidy for housebuyers, tax cuts – the recovery began to stumble.

So now they're talking about renewing their stimulus packages. We are not so very different.

The collapse in credit in bank lending that was going to happen in 2008 and 2009 has been merely postponed.

Had the world allowed that to happen – and here Gordon Brown did earn his place in history as the man who led the G20 into a concerted global stimulus – then we would indeed have seen a 1930s slump and the horrors of that era revisited upon us.

Although it is going to be more orderly and contained, a contraction in credit throughout the advanced world is about to follow, and it will hurt.

It will not, for example, be good for house prices or the value of your pension pot.

In its way, it will be just as bad for the economy as the public spending cuts, and very possibly more so.

"Credit Crunch 2" is a sequel that we have all been trying to avoid ... but it is coming to a town all too near you all the same.

Independent  24 July 2009

Economic rebound a double-edged sword for George Osborne and the Bank of England

The spring of 2010 saw the fastest expansion since early 2006, when the housing market was hot, the City was booming and only a handful of Cassandras were warning that it would all end in tears ...

... it looks unlikely that Sentance will be able to muster the votes he needs to start the process by which borrowing costs start to rise to more normal levels from their current emergency rate of just 0.5%.

Firstly, there is the evidence from the United States, where the robust expansion at the end of 2009 has faded during 2010. Throughout this crisis, Britain has tended to follow the US with a lag of about six months.

Secondly, the possibility that the strength of growth between April and June was in part the result of companies rebuilding stocks after running down inventories during 2009 seems to be supported by recent weak data for consumer confidence, the housing market and bank financing of businesses.

Finally, the scale of the planned budgetary austerity is unprecedented for the post-war period, and the Bank will be concerned – even after growth of 1.1% – that the economy is not strong enough to withstand a simultaneous tightening of fiscal and monetary policy ...

Guardian  23 July 2009    George Osborne

Together at Chequers, but this was the week that the coalition's honeymoon ended

UK sprints to rapid recovery but it may be 'as good as it gets'

Darling: GDP surge vindicates Labour

Bank of England minutes reveal surprise split on interest rates

Watch out, the great £50bn property unload is about to begin

It is not so much "asset backed securities" which sunk the UK banking system, still less the domestic housing market – where default rates have remained remarkably tame.

Rather, it was the same as last time – good old fashioned commercial property lending.

According to a recent De Montfort University study, there is approximately £300bn of banking loans outstanding to the British commercial property market, of which approximately £50bn is in breach of covenant.

Yet despite the fastest and deepest commercial property slump since records began – a peak to trough fall of approximately 44pc – there has so far been only limited impairment applied to these assets.

That may be about to change ...

Telegraph  22 July 2010        

Federal Reserve chairman warns of 'unusually uncertain' outlook for US

Ben Bernanke says struggling banking sector and Greece's near-collapse have delayed America's recovery ...

He blamed the banking sector, which continued to labour with poorly performing loans, as one of the chief drags on the ability of companies to expand.

The near collapse of the Greek economy before its bailout by the European Union was also blamed for delaying the US recovery.

He pointed to weak employment, with more than half of the unemployed having been out of work for more than six months. Average growth in private jobs of 100,000 a month this year was "insufficient to cut the jobless rate materially", and it would probably take a "significant amount of time" to restore the 8.5m jobs lost in 2008 and 2009, Bernanke said in prepared remarks.

He told Senator Christopher Dodd, chair of the committee:

"Part of the reason I'm concerned by the situation is that this is the worst labour market since the Great Depression. People who are unemployed for a long period of time see their skills atrophy. They may become demoralised, and short term unemployment becomes long term unemployment. We need to be very concerned." ...

Guardian  22 July 2010    George Osborne

It's 'negflation' that Britain really needs to worry about

The Third Depression

Global Economy

Economy set for triple whammy

The British economy faces a triple whammy of higher inflation, lower growth and rising unemployment, according to one of the Bank of England's most senior policy makers. Living standards over the next few years will rise only "minimally".

In an interview with The Independent, the Bank's chief economist, Spencer Dale, said that he did not expect inflation to return to its 2 per cent official target before the end of next year, about a year later than previously hoped, partly because of the hike in VAT to 20 per cent from January announced in the Budget.

And, although Mr Dale acknowledged that the emergency Budget had done much to avoid the risk of a UK sovereign debt crisis and a rise in interest rates, he also acknowledged that the Budget would mean lower growth.

Mr Dale agreed that he would not be surprised if unemployment went higher in the next few months.

For the next "three, four, five years, demand in the economy will be "incredibly anaemic" relative to previous recoveries ...

Independent  22 July 2010    George Osborne

The Bank's man keeps a hawkish eye on the 'evils' of inflation

Who will pay the bill for closing Britain's £200bn energy gap?

One fact is broadly agreed upon by all parties: in order to meet its climate change obligations and to ensure the lights do not go out, Britain has to spend somewhere in the region of £200bn on new energy production facilities before 2020: on traditional coal and gas-fired power plants, on nuclear and on renewables.

The question is where the money is going to come from. It will not be the public sector – even if we were not headed into a period of extended austerity, the Government would want the privately-owned energy industry to bear the lion's share of the cost of upgrading its infrastructure.

Nor will it be the energy companies – they simply do not have this sort of cash on their balance sheets.

That leaves two possibilities.

Either consumers will have to pay more, through higher bills, in order to provide the energy industry with the capital it needs, or investors will have to come up with necessary cash, through rights issues and other types of fund-raising exercises at the companies in question.

As a leading member of the latter camp, Mr Woodford's message is that he is not prepared to cough up unless Ofgem extracts some money from the former camp too, by taking a less aggressive line on the returns energy companies earn from customers ...

Independent  21 July 2010    Coal: Carbon Capture & Storage    Nuclear Power

Britain's Nuclear Renaissance in Doubt

China 'leapfrogs US to become biggest energy user'

Vince Cable unveils three-pronged economic growth strategy

Full Steam Ahead

What can be done to prevent a double-dip recession?

On both sides of the Atlantic, a plan B is gathering support that sounds more like a cruise ship than orthodox economic policy – QE2.

Monetarist economists have for months called on the Bank of England and US Federal Reserve to print more money ...

Policymakers usually depend on a cut in interest rates to ease monetary constraints and promote borrowing, but with base rates at 0.5% and governments squeezing public spending, printing money is the only lever left to pull ...

Guardian  20 July 2010    George Osborne

MPC members considered revival of QE

Double dip fears as bank loans dry up

Budget risks return to recession, warns Treasury select committee

Britain’s debt: The untold story

The true scale of Britain's national indebtedness was laid bare by the Office for National Statistics yesterday: almost £4 trillion, or £4,000bn, about four times higher than previously acknowledged ...

The ONS itemised the public sector's main liabilities as:

* Future payments for the state old age pension: £1.1trn to £1.4trn

* Unfunded public sector pensions for teachers, NHS staff and civil servants: £770bn to £1.2trn

* Payments under private finance initiative contracts: £200bn

* Contingent liabilities (eg bank deposit guarantees): £500bn

* Nuclear power plant decommissioning: £45bn

* Impact of financial sector interventions: £1trn to £1.5trn

Leaving aside the possibility of another financial meltdown that would leave the taxpayer with the liabilities of a substantial part of the banking system, the figures suggest that the realistic total liabilities of the public sector could be as much as £3.8trn (£3,800,000,000,000) ...

Independent  14 July 2010    George Osborne

Jobless fall; part-time jump

In the three months to May the unemployment rate was 7.8 per cent of the workforce, slightly better than the market had been expecting.

This compares with 10 per cent in the eurozone and 9.5 per cent in the US.

The number of people out of work for more than 12 months was up by 61,000 to 787,000.

The total of people working part-time jumped by 148,000 to 7.82m, or 27 per cent of those in employment, the highest since records began in 1992.

The number of temporary workers was also up by 78,000.

Those classed as economically inactive – for instance because they are students or are long-term sick or looking after a family – fell by 62,000 to 8.1m or 21.3 per cent of the working age population.

There was a fall of 5,000 in unemployed 16-24-year-olds to 923,000 or 19.5 per cent of the workforce in that age group.

Vacancies were up by 10,000 to 486,000.

Average weekly earnings, including bonuses, rose by 2.7 per cent in the three months to May compared with a year ago, down from 4.1 per cent in the three months to April, confirming that pay pressures remain subdued.

Earnings excluding bonuses rose by just 1.8 per cent, compared with 1.9 per cent.

FT  14 July 2010    'Reserve Army'

Part-time workforce at record levels

ONS

Size isn't everything in banking

Banks invented a load of financial products and services that the world doesn't really need

... there is one area where [Stephen] Hester misses the point.

"It is a popular myth to believe that banking and financial services dominate the British economy and should be cut down to size," he told readers of the Times.

"Banks account for a far smaller proportion of the economy than manufacturing – 7.7% compared with 12.8%. Everyone wants to see growth in the manufacturing sector, but we need growth in banking too."

Curiously, this argument was omitted from Hester's related speech to the British Bankers' Association.

It is nevertheless a strange claim. Once upon a time, and for a very long time, the banking sector was about 3% of the economy.

If you are going to applaud the fact that it is now 7.7%, you must answer the charge that banks have simply sucked up talent and capital from elsewhere (like manufacturing) and become a drag on growth in general ...

Guardian  14 July 2010    Banking Commission    Fractional Reserve Banking

Banks are carrying on while the rest of us pay the price

FSA chairman backs tax on 'socially useless' banks

The socially useless City

BP's Crisis Could Soon Become Great Britain's

For Great Britain, the crash of its largest company has been a disaster, particularly given the timing -- concurrent with Prime Minister David Cameron's deep spending cuts in an effort to bring down the country's substantial budget deficit and sovereign debt.

Cameron has taken a keen interest in the BP debacle; a team of government experts is feverishly drafting an emergency plan.

The effects of a breakup, a bankruptcy and even a partial nationalization are all reportedly being evaluated.

The 10,000 British jobs BP provides isn't the only issue. BP pays out nearly €7 billion each year in taxes and fees to the British state.

Likewise, the company owns large segments of the country's energy infrastructure.

Even more ominous, however, is the fact that a significant chunk of British pensions depend on BP's well-being.

Whether directly or via large private-equity funds, many Britons own a piece of the company.

Their pension funds have taken a serious hit from the company's precipitous drop in value and missed dividend payments ...

Next week, Cameron will be flying to Washington with Chris Huhne, his energy minister, to discuss the crisis with the administration of US President Barack Obama. The trip's top priority is that of capping the amount BP could be held liable for.

Der Spiegel  13 July 2010

Building work slumps

New building work on social housing projects fell 40 per cent during the three months to July, in a sign that government spending cuts are starting to hit the construction sector, writes Ed Hammond.

News of the fall in project starts comes just a fortnight after Connaught, which specialises in social housing maintenance, issued a profit warning that wiped out about a third of its market value.

The construction sector, which is heavily exposed to government-funded building projects, has warned that harsh spending cuts would cost thousands of jobs and damage the prospects of economic recovery.

The recent cancellation of a raft of school-building projects, which account for 10 per cent of the £100bn construction industry’s output, has raised fears that the sector may bear the brunt of the government’s austerity package.

Willmott Dixon, a construction company that specialises in social housing developments, said that many projects were going back to planning to be redesigned to cope with a different tenant mix.

The company said: “We are seeing a fair few projects being delayed, but it is not a seismic reduction in starts yet.”

The upward trend in private housing seen earlier this year has also petered out, with the value of new work starting down 2 per cent on a year ago, according Glenigan, the construction data provider.

“While social housing starts are likely to remain under pressure over the coming months, a renewed recovery in private housing starts is anticipated at the end of the year as housebuilders capitalise on gradually improving market conditions,” said Allan Wilen, Glenigan’s economics director.

FT  12 July 2010    George Osborne

If public spending is behind the recovery, what happens when we cut it?

David Prosser offers a resumé of the latest ONS report. Not much sign of any 'rebalancing' here.

Britain's economy has come out of recession only because of a boost to public spending.

The private sector has not benefited from a return to growth in consumer spending and nor is it picking up much help from the weak value of sterling, which might ordinarily have been expected to help exporters.

These are backward-looking figures, of course, but there is not much reason for optimism about the way the picture may have changed since the end of March – or how it might develop further during the months ahead.

On exports, for example, our most important market, the European Union, is not performing any better than us and the eurozone's financial crisis may have damaged confidence and demand further.

Not much hope there, then.

As for consumer spending, higher taxes, depressed wage settlements and elevated unemployment hardly augur well.

And let's not even talk about government spending, previously the only source of growth in the economy, which is now set for unprecedented cuts ...

Independent  13 July 2010    

Break-up of eurozone would speed up recovery

Where will the private sector jobs come from?

Answer came there none

Quite rightly, Osborne thinks the economy should be less dependent on consumer spending ...

The private sector can manage. Freed from the constraints of an unaffordably large public sector, the economy has the wherewithal to create more than 2m jobs in the next five years.

That was the gist of the report from the Office for Budget Responsibility brought forward yesterday in response to the Guardian's story about the employment losses from George Osborne's spending cuts.

The OBR's figures differed slightly from those in yesterday's Guardian, but not materially so.

It estimates that public-sector employment will drop by 490,000 by 2014-15 and by 601,000 by 2015-16.

That is broadly in line with the range of 100,000-120,000 jobs lost each year in the leaked Treasury impact assessment.

It gave no specific numbers for the private-sector jobs that would be lost as a result of the knock-on effects of the chancellor's budget, but the figures in the Guardian story of 120,000-140,000 a year have not been challenged.

Despite that hit to jobs, the OBR said that overall employment would pick up in every year from now, rising from 28.89m to 29.97m by 2015. That's a net increase of 1.08m even after the impact of the budget is accounted for, and well over 2m jobs in all ...

So where would the 2m jobs come from? ...

Guardian  30 June 2010    Branch Office Britain    Reserve Army

Battle breaks out over Treasury's jobless figures

George Osborne needs 2m private jobs

Office for budget irresponsibility

Government commission urges rapid setting up of Green Investment Bank

The Green Investment Bank Commission argued that cutting the number of state-funded green bodies would "radically improve" the task of cutting the nation's carbon output – an area where Britain continues to lag behind official targets.

The Commission was led by former Merrill Lynch chairman Bob Wigley. It warned that the scale of the looming crisis means that the government needs to rapidly set up a bank to fund Britain's low-carbon future, ideally within the next six months ...

The government has estimated that building the new low-carbon infrastructure that the UK needs will cost £550bn between now and 2020.

The total bill over the next twenty years could hit £1tn.

Wigley's team have named three quangoes with an annual budget of £185m to be folded into a Green Investment Bank (GIB) - the Carbon Trust, the Energy Technologies Institute, and the low carbon wing of the Technology Strategy Board. They also have their eye on six government funds with a total budget of £2bn.

In their 50-page report, which was welcomed by the government, they say that these nine groups have been "initially identified", indicating that the Bank could go hunting through the "Quango Jungle" for more organisations to "rationalise" as its first tranche of funding runs out ...

Guardian  29 June 2010    Coalition Log

Years wasted in climate battle

How long can the housing market avoid a crash?

A potentially lethal combination of stagnant living standards and declining mortgage approvals is threatening to send the housing market into a precipitous slump ...

Bank of England data released yesterday suggests that the revival in property sales seen during the second half of last year has gone firmly into reverse, with every indication that prices will fall by next year, as lending remains so sluggish ...

The pressure on the banks will be increased in the coming months in any case as about £400bn in official support to them is due to be withdrawn, and banks will have to turn to wholesale money markets to support their lending. This may prove expensive ...

The European Central Bank will suck €142bn (£115bn) of its lending to the European banks on Thursday.

The extent of the squeeze on British living standards over the next few years was laid bare by the Hay consultancy group yesterday, who predicted that wage rises will fall badly behind inflation for the next four years.

With median salary growth forecast by Hay Group to reach just 2.4 per cent this year, and inflation rising to 5.3 per cent, according to the Retail Price Index, pay is falling in real terms for the average British worker for the first time in a decade.

... the hike in VAT to 20 per cent in January next year will ... Reductions in tax credits and thresholds, new higher rates of income tax for the better-off and increases in other taxes such as capital gains tax and insurance premium tax will [be an obvious hit to the spending power of family budgets].

The higher rate of CGT will make the returns from buy-to-let investing even less attractive ...

Independent  30 June 2010    FRB Log    Ponzi Housing Market

Europe's banks prepare for a day of reckoning

House price surge stalled in June

House price inflation hits 8.5%

The Third Depression

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression ...

... the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.

And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy.

Around the world — most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.

In 2008 and 2009, it seemed as if we might have learned from history.

Unlike their predecessors ... today’s governments allowed deficits to rise. And better policies helped the world avoid complete collapse: the recession brought on by the financial crisis arguably ended last summer ...

... unemployment — especially long-term unemployment — remains at levels that would have been considered catastrophic not long ago, and shows no sign of coming down rapidly. And both the United States and Europe are well on their way toward Japan-style deflationary traps.

In the face of this grim picture, you might have expected policy makers to realize that they haven’t yet done enough to promote recovery. But no: over the last few months there has been a stunning resurgence of hard-money and balanced-budget orthodoxy.

... the revival of the old-time religion is most evident in Europe, where officials seem to be getting their talking points from the collected speeches of Herbert Hoover, up to and including the claim that raising taxes and cutting spending will actually expand the economy, by improving business confidence ...

... there is no evidence that short-run fiscal austerity in the face of a depressed economy reassures investors.

On the contrary: Greece has agreed to harsh austerity, only to find its risk spreads growing ever wider; Ireland has imposed savage cuts in public spending, only to be treated by the markets as a worse risk than Spain ...

It’s almost as if the financial markets understand what policy makers seemingly don’t: that while long-term fiscal responsibility is important, slashing spending in the midst of a depression, which deepens that depression and paves the way for deflation, is actually self-defeating.

So I don’t think this is really about Greece, or indeed about any realistic appreciation of the tradeoffs between deficits and jobs.

It is, instead, the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times.

And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy?

The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.

NYT  27 June 2010    G20    'Reserve Army'

[US] Recovery Slows With Weak Job Creation in June

It's 'negflation' that Britain really needs to worry about

'Negflation'

Banks are carrying on while the rest of us pay the price

Despite their disgrace, the banks' well-oiled propaganda machines continue to spin their lines that the finance sector services the productive economy, is the major contributor of tax revenues to the Treasury, and that it is a significant engine of job creation.

But the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (Cresc) at the University of Manchester ... challenges each of these assertions.

Between 1997 and 2009, almost a third of lending was between banks. Half went to individuals, mainly on mortgages that fuelled the housing bubble; manufacturing received just 3% of the pie; other business loans accounted for only 17%. Since the crash, net lending to business has fallen by £40bn.

The Cresc research also shows that even in a finance-led boom the sector created no net new jobs. Direct employment in finance hovered around the 1 million mark, less than half that in a weakened manufacturing sector – and most of the jobs it does produce are concentrated in London and the south-east.

Neither can the finance sector credibly claim to be the major source of tax revenue in the UK. It contributed just 6.8% of tax revenues between 2002 and 2008, just over half the amount paid by manufacturers; the reason traditional industry generates more is because it is labour-intensive ...

Observer  13 June 2010    

Inflation in the UK

UK inflation dropped to 3.4% in May from 3.7% the month before, with falls in the prices of food, non-alcoholic drinks and petrol helping to ease CPI.

The Bank's rate-setting monetary policy committee (MPC) will now be hoping inflation will continue to fall back towards its target and it has predicted CPI will be back below 2% over the next two years.

The Office for National Statistics also reported that the retail prices index (RPI) fell to 5.1% in May, down from 5.3% in April.

Guardian  15 June 2010        

Fears for UK economy as Osborne sharpens axe

Further warning signals emerged yesterday over the parlous position of the UK's economic recovery ...

The Office for National Statistics said the manufacturing sector, until now one of the biggest contributors to the recovery, had slipped back in April, with a 0.4 per cent fall in industrial production ...

The Bank of England added to the concerns with its monthly survey of expectations of inflation, which showed that people think price rises will average 3.3 per cent over the next 12 months, the highest level for almost two years.

That could add to pressure on the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee to raise interest rates sooner than expected, with the OECD having said last month that the cost of borrowing would have to be increased before the end of the year ...

The Treasury has been working on the basis that the UK economy will grow by 3.25 per cent in 2011, but the OBR could cut that projection as low as 2.2 per cent, the consensus prediction amongst independent forecasters.

Roger Bootle, managing director of Capital Economics, said that if so, the government borrowing requirement would rise by £20bn by 2015, suggesting even more drastic spending cuts would be needed to address the shortfall ...

Nervousness about the state of the UK economy was also heightened yesterday by warnings from other countries around the world, which suggest continued doubts about the sustainability of the global recovery ...

The Independent  12 June 2010

Balancing on a Cable

'A victory lap for the City'

Has the battle to reform finance in the UK already turned into a victory lap for the City? ...

... rebalancing the economy will flow from sorting out financial regulation. Shareholder and employee returns in finance have been much higher than in any other sector because society provided the safety-net capital that banks need to operate.

This had the same effect on the economy as the discovery of huge gas fields had on the Dutch economy in the 1970s and 1980s: talent and investment flowed to the hydrocarbon sector and other parts of the economy could not attract good people or capital. The rest of the Dutch economy withered ...

Once you take the hidden subsidies out of finance, the economy will rebalance.

Vince Cable, who sounded so good on the economic crisis before he became Secretary of State, knows this. He didn't say it.

The danger is that he knows that financial reform, now under Osborne, will end up being a "victory lap for the City" ...

The consequences of handing the economy back to the City are horrific ...

openDemocracy  03 June 2010

Competition for jobs takes heavy toll on starting pay

Starting salaries for workers taking new jobs fell by 3 per cent last month, despite the rising cost of living.

According to a report, the average salary for recruits was £31,871 in May, against £33,220 in April and £33,414 in December last year, as increased competition among applicants allowed employers to limit pay offers.

Wages are becoming more of a flashpoint between workers and employers as companies try to limit costs while inflation continues to rise. The Bank of England’s preferred measure of CPI inflation jumped to 3.7 per cent in April, up from 3.4 per cent in March, while the wider RPI measure, which includes housing costs and is seen by many as a better indicator of the cost of living, jumped to a near-20-year high of 5.3 per cent.

The data on new salaries in the Reed Job Index comes weeks after official figures showed that private sector pay, excluding bonuses, for new and existing workers rose by only 1.2 per cent in the first three months of the year as companies continued to freeze pay ...

Times  01 June 2010    Inequality    

How long until the lights go out?

One accusation frequently levelled at the Labour administration by the Conservatives was that ministers were moving so slowly on developing energy policy that Britain could see the lights go out.

In that context, the decision to give energy policy to one of the five Liberal Democrats offered a cabinet seat looks a curious one ...

... Mr Huhne is going to find himself in an impossible position. He surely can't be expected to drive forward implementation of a policy to which he and his parliamentary colleagues are so opposed. Somehow one feels that this is not an issue the new Energy and Climate Change Secretary is going to be in much of a hurry to address.

Britain can't afford too much of a delay, however. The lead time on nuclear power is such that dithering now could cause real difficulties in five to 10 years' time.

That's an argument that you can expect EDF, which spent £12.5bn buying British Energy only 18 months ago, to make at its earliest opportunity in the weeks ahead.

Independent  13 May 2010    Alternatives to Fossil Fuels    Nuclear Power    Tidal Energy

UK 'could face blackouts by 2016'

Scientists attack energy industry

We must end our oil dependency, says chancellor

Mind the Gap

UK facing 'energy crunch'

UK 'tops energy wasters league'

UK at 'real risk' of power shortages

'A policy of running on empty '

Horlicks being made out of energy policy

Mind the gap

The Busby Report

The Oil Drum

Energy White Paper 2003

Energy White paper 2007

How to get Britain making things again

By going with the decidedly old Labour strategy of industrial interventionism over the past 18 months, Lord Mandelson left himself open to exactly the sort of accusations of statism that Ken Clarke, his opposite number, has thrown at him during this election campaign.

To which the Business Secretary must now be tempted to reply: "But it's working."

Yesterday's positive update from the manufacturing sector is especially welcome in the context of the consensus that Britain's economy needs rebalancing away from its dependence on the City.

Mr Clarke may not share his rival's view that a new emphasis on manufacturing requires the Government to become an industrial activist, but he too wants a return to a Britain that "makes things" ...

Independent  05 May 2010    

The Great Rebalancing

Growth in manufacturing ... 15-year high

Steep increase in firms at risk of insolvency

Job prospects bleak in Black Country

The West Midlands has been hit harder than anywhere by the recession that leeched jobs from the economy.

The number of jobseeker’s allowance claimants, a key measure of unemployment, doubled in some constituencies during the downturn.

Although the numbers have levelled off in recent months, and today’s unemployment figures are not expected to buck the trend, the most recent figures suggest that this will remain a blackspot.

The number of claimants fell in February to 176,100 or 7.3 per cent of the working population but were still well above the national average of 5.8 per cent.

In Birmingham 12.7 per cent of the adult population is unemployed.

The figure is higher among school-leavers. Youth unemployment in the city is running at 24.4 per cent, almost double the national rate of 12.9 per cent.

A Birmingham City Council report last week suggested that soaring unemployment could cause another outbreak of gang violence as the young turn to drugs and crime for money and status ...

In the Black Country 138,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost since 1998.

Dan Sloan, 19, from Cannock, said: “I have been looking for a job since I was 16. I would take anything really, building, gardening. It is tough. When I go for a job, somebody always seems to get there first. I feel like giving up now. I might as well resign myself to the dole and living on benefits. It may not be much of a life but at least it is better than no money at all.”

Times  21 April 2010    Economic Democracy    GDP    Youth Unemployment

After decades of clocking off, can the UK's factory gates open again?

On the global stage, the UK remains the world's sixth biggest manufacturer and is home to world renowned businesses such as Rolls-Royce and JCB.

But it has also lost some big names to overseas predators – most recently the Birmingham-based chocolate-maker, Cadbury – something that reverberates right along such companies' supply chains. It is a trend that is all too familiar to Warwickshire industrial estate owner Bruce Undy.

"We have seen a dramatic reduction in large companies that smaller companies supplied, either directly or indirectly," says Undy, who is regional chairman for the Federation of Small Businesses in Warwickshire and Coventry ...

Another hurdle facing the manufacturing sector is that of depleting skills. Digby Jones, former head of business group CBI, saw many experienced UK workers laid off during the recession and believes they will be hard to win back. Nor is there much new talent emerging to replace those lost workers, he argues ...

In the West Midlands the skills shortage has been particularly debilitating. A recent report compiled with the help of regional development agency Advantage West Midlands highlighted a link between the regional unemployment rate of 27.5% in 2007 – higher than the national average – and the fact that nearly 18% of people of working age have no formal qualifications ...

Observer  11 Apr 2010

Heavy industry claims carbon emission targets are 'death by a thousand cuts'

In the next month, the European commission will decide how industry will meet tough new targets for the third phase of the EU emissions trading scheme, which begins in 2012. The scheme sets a cap on companies' emissions by issuing permits to pollute and imposes a penalty if they exceed this.

Under the scheme, which runs until 2020, the cap is tightened each year. The EU wants the scheme to achieve its targets of reducing Europe's emissions by a fifth in 2020 compared with 2005 levels. But industry fears the extra costs will put them at a disadvantage against rivals outside the EU ...

Observer  11 Apr 2010    Carbon Trading

Manufacturing sector

British manufacturing activity 'rises by fastest rate in 15 years'

CIPS/Markit reports that manufacturing activity rose for ninth straight month, although sector continues to cut jobs ...

One of the sectors worst hit by the downturn posted its ninth straight month of rising activity in March, with the CIPS/Markit manufacturing purchasing managers index (PMI) reading beating City forecasts. The activity reading rose to 57.2 from 56.5 in February, compared with economists' forecast of 56.8. It was the highest reading since October 1994. A figure above 50 denotes growth and below it signals contraction.

The factory output index also rose to its highest in more than 15 years, hitting 61.9 from 59.8 in February ...

The survey showed 15% of firms reported job cuts, fanning fears that Britain's labour market will be slow to recover from this recession, as with previous downturns.

Still, Dobson stressed that smaller companies were hiring new staff.

"Although manufacturing job losses were recorded in March, this was mainly centred on large enterprises. SMEs, in contrast, reported higher staffing levels," he said.

Economists will now be awaiting evidence that a firmer recovery for manufacturing can be reflected in official data.

While the PMI survey has shown a brighter picture for several months, the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics showed factory output fell by 0.9% in January – the biggest drop in production in six months.

Guardian  01 April 2010    GDP

'Too few' practical experiments in science lessons

Science teachers are doing fewer practical experiments because of the demands of the curriculum, tests and badly behaved pupils, a poll suggests.

Online research among 1,300 teachers by the government-funded Science Learning Centres found 96% said they faced obstacles to doing practical lessons.

Two thirds blamed pressure from the curriculum while four in 10 blamed the demands of testing and marking.

Pupils' behaviour was cited by 29%, and one in four blamed a lack of equipment ...

BBC NEWS  26 Mar 2010    State Theory of Learning

Alistair Darling neuters Tories with carefully judged snips

After leaving manufacturing out in the cold for 13 years, it was suddenly hug a metal-basher time ... this is not going to break the stranglehold of the City on the economy, but it is a step in the right direction.

Labour's real failure has been that it fawned on the bankers for far too long and waited until far too late to introduce measures to build up the manufacturing base ...

Darling believes the events of the past three years have made it possible for centre-left parties to articulate a more interventionist approach to economic management, and that's where the politics of yesterday's speech kick in ...

Guardian  25 Mar 2010    Tax & Spend

A New Leaf

Cleaner British cars need cleaner power stations to match ...

... driving one will not entirely absolve the user from planetary sin. For while the Leaf’s claim to be “zero emission” is true in the sense that the car itself will generate no pollution — it will not even have an exhaust pipe — quite a bit of pollution will come from the plants that will generate the electricity to charge the batteries.

Since most electricity is still generated from fossil fuels, not from nuclear or renewable sources, most electric cars are actually gas or coal-powered.

Cleaner electricity is some way off. Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, has sensible plans for cleaning up coal-fired power stations with experimental carbon capture facilities. But these are mammoth projects, and still on the drawing board.

The Government has also warmed to nuclear power. But the long time-scale for building nuclear plants means that older ones will have been decommissioned before new ones can come on stream.

Many experts are now warning of energy blackouts ...

Times  19 Mar 2010    Energy Policy

UK car industry receives £2.6bn injection

Are electric cars the future?

Tories plan new carbon tax to boost clean energy

Conservatives plan fast-track for new nuclear plants

Tory energy policy given lukewarm response

Electric car to save Nissan jobs

Largest UK trial of electric cars to begin within weeks

Govt jump starts £25m electric car trials

Labour's £5,000 sweetener to launch electric car revolution

Electric Cars

Hybrids

treehugger.com

Sheffield Forgemasters gets £80m state loan ...

... from the British government to build a massive steel press to supply components for the nuclear industry ...

The company will become only the second in the world with necessary nuclear accreditation able to make the largest forgingsrequired to make the critical components required for the global civil nuclear industry ...

Lord Mandelson, who is visiting the company today, said: "This is not just help for one company. Today we're announcing a willingness to invest that will make the UK a leading provider in the nuclear and the low carbon supply chain."

Currently the UK is able to supply around 50pc of the plant and equipment for a new nuclear programme in the UK but with investment this could increase to 70pc, the Government said.

The Government also committed to co-fund the delivery of up to 1,000 apprenticeships a year in the nuclear energy sector.

Michael Macdonald of the Prospect union said:

"Not only is it great news for local job security, but workers at Sheffield Forgemasters will be making a vital product to support new nuclear build in the UK, as well as the global market. This deal provides yet more evidence that new build will bring jobs into the UK supply chain."

Telegraph  17 March 2010    Nuclear Power    Peter Mandelson    Rebalancing Economy

Manufacturing sector needs a new direction

One of the cruellest aspects of this recession is that while the banking industry has staged a spectacular comeback, manufacturing is suffering real damage.

The pain began in the 1980s when the Conservatives, under Mrs Thatcher, crushed the miners, deregulated the jobs market, privatised utilities and slashed tax rates.

But New Labour must bear much of the responsibility. As chancellor, Gordon Brown behaved as Thatcher's heir and espoused her free-market liberalism, cultivating the City and financiers. The result is that now the recession has struck, the economic divide in this country is plain to see.

A paper from the Centre for Research in Socio-Cultural Change (Cresc) at the University of Manchester* has found that despite a decade of apparent economic boom, private-sector jobs were not generated in sufficient numbers to fill the gap left by traditional manufacturing.

Instead, public-sector jobs and employment supported by the state accounted for more than half of all job creation nationally and much more in the former industrial regions ...

The reliance on finance has, Cresc claims, returned inequality to Edwardian levels because of the emergence of a new class of "working rich" individuals, almost all of whom are in finance, and in London.

Some of the dire consequences of this were masked because the slack was partly taken up by the public sector, which expanded under Brown – for worthy reasons, it must be said, including the improving of health and education services.

That, however, hid the fact that the private sector has failed to create high-quality jobs and sustain prosperity. Cresc goes so far as to claim that former industrial regions such as the north-east have no other visible means of support than the public sector ...

Observer  07 Mar 2010    Economic Democracy

CRESC Working Paper No.75

Labour's former Prince of Darkness is preaching a hi-tech, low-carbon, digital revival ...

The man who is, among other things, business secretary and Gordon Brown's power broker, is in Rotherham to launch a £25m research facility for Britain's civil nuclear industry, run by industry and local universities and funded jointly by government and Yorkshire's regional development agency.

Reactor companies such as Westinghouse of the US and Areva of France are looking to build more than £40bn of nuclear plant in the UK in the next couple of decades. The idea is that British suppliers can learn how to manufacture the components they need, and test them at the centre.

"How are we going to make sure that this transition [to a low-carbon economy] benefits the UK supply chain?" he demands of his audience. "Are we going to import the technologies, goods and engineers from other countries who still have a head start on us? Or are we going to make sure we stay ahead of the curve?" ...

Mandelson wants to revive Britain's flagging manufacturers and, with direct government help, lay the foundations for a hi-tech rebirth of industry. He admits that Labour could – and should – have done more to arrest Britain's industrial decline, but he lays most of the blame on past Tory policies.

According to the Office for National Statistics, manufacturing shrank at a far quicker rate in the first 10 years of Labour than under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. It accounted for about a fifth of economic output in 1997, but had declined to just over 12% 10 years later.

Under Thatcher, it fell from just over a quarter of the economy to 22.5% ...

Guardian  03 Dec 2009

The art of industry

UK 'must find 600,000 new engineers in seven years'

The newly appointed Tory technology tsar attacked the banks for creating "illusory wealth" and said that the challenge now is to see if "Britain [can] make money from money – or money from making things".

Sir James, at the Conservative Party conference, said scientists needed better financial support, such as further tax incentives, but insisted "cultural changes" were crucial.

Sir James told the party conference that the development of new technologies had been "neglected" and that a "change of policy and of attitude" was needed.

Arguing that the number of patent applications was indicative of the health of business, Sir James said Japan has 19 times more patent applications than Britain, America 13 times more and South Korea seven times more.

He said: "Britain has 58,000 engineering vacancies but produces just 20,000 engineering graduates every year. What do we do? We close down engineering faculties - over 40 in the past decade."

Sir James said Britain produces twice as many business graduates as engineering graduates.

He used the example of the Second World War, when Britons invented "radar, jet engines and computers" to show how Government demand and backing could produce significant advances in science and technology.

Telegraph  05 October 2009

Conservatives charge Sir James Dyson ...

The IMF said Britain's growth had been over-dependent on bubbles in the financial and construction sectors and that the UK's recovery prospects were worse than those in the euro zone.

In its health check on the European economy, the IMF expressed concern about the 50% jump in corporate insolvencies in the UK, the steep fall in productivity, the stubbornness of inflation caused by the fall in the value of the pound, and the reliance of the economy on finance and housing.

"A jobless recovery could be on the cards for the UK," the IMF said. The report noted that firms had been hoarding labour and it would therefore take time for employment to pick up even when growth recovered. "The financial crisis has hit the banking sector particularly hard in the UK, which typically is associated with a slow recovery [in employment]," the IMF said.

"With the disappearance of exaggerated profits in the financial sector, long-term growth in the UK will probably suffer more than in the euro zone," the IMF said ...

Guardian  04 October 2009

Britain's economic recovery will be hampered by a potential £180bn credit shortfall next year caused by weak banks and the need to finance the government's budget deficit, the International Monetary Fund warned today.

Although the Fund used its half-yearly snapshot of global financial conditions to scale back its estimate of the cost of the two-year crisis to banks and other institutions, it singled out the UK as the country most at risk from a potential dearth of funding.

"In terms of regional vulnerability, the UK appears most susceptible to credit constraints ... given its significant reliance on the banking channel and the projected sharp decline in domestic bank balance sheets, as well as substantial public financing needs," the IMF said in its Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR).

The Fund said the UK could be facing a funding gap of £180bn next year - 15% of GDP - and far higher than the 2.4% projected for the United States and the 3% for the euro area.

The report added that a key question would be whether the global financial system could provide enough credit to sustain an economic recovery - an issue that has also been troubling the Bank of England in recent months as it has debated whether to expand money creation under its quantitative easing programme.

Britain and America's reliance on foreign investors to fund its budget deficit meant there was a risk of higher long-term interest rates and weaker currencies, the IMF stressed. "If foreign investors become concerned about long-term fiscal sustainability in these countries, interest rates on government securities would need to adjust higher and the exchange rate would depreciate."

Guardian  30 September 2009

UK monthly budget deficit soars to record £16bn

IMF presses for tax on banks' risky behaviour

IMF

Nissan is to announce that its Wearside factory will build a new generation of electric cars - which could secure the future of at least 4,000 jobs.

The plant, near Sunderland, has beaten off competition from other Nissan factories in Europe for the investment.

The £380m project will be supported by the European Investment Bank and aided in part by government grants ...

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson plans a "green revolution" in the north east.

He will visit the factory and address some of the company's 4,000 workers about plans to create a "low-carbon economic area" in the region, including a research and development centre and technology park.

Earlier this year, the government set aside £2.3bn to support Britain's ailing car industry - but nothing has yet been paid out.

However, Japanese car giant Nissan could be one of the first beneficiaries as it announces the new type of electric car that is to be made at its existing Sunderland premises ...

BBC NEWS  20 July 2009

Largest UK trial of electric cars to begin within weeks

Govt jump starts £25m electric car trials

Labour's £5,000 sweetener to launch electric car revolution

Electric Cars

Hybrids

treehugger.com

Britain's energy systems are no longer fit for purpose, according to leading members of the UK's best-known scientific academy, the Royal Society.

A meeting of experts at the society said the government must invest hugely to create a new low-carbon economy.

And it must take on the big generating companies who dominate energy policy, participants said ...

The experts say ministers must make up lost time by investing massively in research and deployment of renewables; creating a more wide-ranging electricity 'supergrid'; and ensuring that coal-fired power stations capture 90% of their carbon emissions by 2020 ...

First priority on the society's action list is a big push on energy efficiency in existing homes, taking advantage of the latest technologies.

The call is echoed by the all-party parliamentary climate change group, which is set to insist that landlords should be prevented from letting homes which waste energy.

The group's vice-chairman, Lord Redesdale, said the UK would never reach its climate change targets unless it radically improved policies on existing homes.

He said: "A billion tonnes will have failed to be saved from domestic carbon emissions and this is equivalent to the CO2 pollution from Britain's aviation sector over the next 25 years.

"We can either heat our homes and have hot baths, or fly but not both. There really does need to be much tougher policies on reducing carbon emissions from the homes." ...

BBC NEWS 28 June 2009

Shocked by the parliamentary expenses scandal and suffering from the recession, British voters have shown their displeasure with Gordon Brown's government. Labour was trounced in local and European elections earlier this month.

Despite this electoral drubbing, Labour lawmakers expressed their confidence in the prime minister on June 8. Given his supposedly successful management of the economy while chancellor of the exchequer, the majority felt that he was best qualified to lead Britain out of the recession, which, they claim, was caused by external forces, not by Mr. Brown's policies.

The facts show otherwise. Britain's economic downturn began when its house price and household debt bubbles inevitably burst, beginning with the run on Northern Rock in September 2007. These bubbles had swollen to higher levels, relative to average price and income levels respectively, than in the U.S. and other major economies.

In relation to their long-term average, British house prices soared by 88.5% between 1997 and 2007, according to the OECD. In the U.S. the rise was 64.5%. Britain's household debt rose to 176.9% of disposable income in 2007 from 104.8% in 1997. During the same period, U.S. household debt rose only to 105.8% of disposable income from 64.3% in 1997. The increases in Germany and France were considerably lower.

Gordon Brown tolerated and even encouraged the formation of these bubbles for several reasons. The traditional sources of Britain's economic strength, the mining and manufacturing industries, shrank during his term as chancellor. Total mining sector output, including oil and natural gas, dropped by 31% between 2000 and 2007. Total manufacturing production was stagnant during this period.

The gross value, in inflation-adjusted prices, of output from all production industries combined fell by 3% between 2000 and 2007. Their employment level dropped by nearly 1.1 million over the same period. These trends were not an inevitable result of shifts in comparative advantages that are said to occur in advanced economies. Real manufacturing output rose at an average annual rate of 2.2% in the U.S., 1.2% in Germany and 1.1% in France between 2000 and 2006, according to the World Bank.

Eager to achieve the illusion of steady progress in the overall economy, Mr. Brown needed the rapid expansion of financial services, and the real estate and business services industries. Their output soared by 48% and 33% respectively from 2000 to 2007, compared with 19% for the overall economy. Their combined employment level reached nearly 6.7 million in 2007, an increase of more than one million.

Rapid expansion of consumer credit in turn boosted demand for wholesale and retail products and services. The booming financial and real estate sectors, with their inflated salaries, bonuses, and profits generated by unsustainably rapid credit growth, also filled Mr. Brown's tax coffers.

Thus, despite the decline in corporate and personal income and national insurance tax revenues from the production industries, he was able to fulfill Labour's 1997 election promise of expanding public services. The output of health and social services increased by 26.3% from 2000 to 2007.

Employment in the category "other service activities," which includes public administration and government services, grew by 1.3 million between 2000 and 2007, reaching almost 10 million -- nearly a third of all British jobs.

So the boom in the financial and real estate sectors served Mr. Brown's political interests well. And he was by no means a passive bystander to their growth. He urged them along in several policy speeches. Introducing on April 1, 2005, a policy document entitled "Homebuy: Expanding the Opportunity to Own," he insisted that "this Britain of ambition and aspiration is a Britain where more and more people must and will have the chance to own their own homes."

Ignoring the inability of many house buyers to pay their mortgages, he touted this message to City bankers in successive annual speeches at the Mansion House in London, promising them "light-touch regulation." Already in 1997 he transferred the responsibility for bank regulation from the Bank of England to the inexperienced Financial Services Authority. He also curbed the central bank's ability to keep asset inflation in check by removing housing costs from the price index.

Mr. Brown also repeatedly praised the City's "innovative skills," bragging in 2006 that it was responsible for 40% of the world's over-the-counter derivatives trade -- which includes the now infamous repackaged subprime mortgages. He gave financial institutions a false sense of security by telling them on June 16, 2004, that "I am determined to ensure that we can lock in greater stability not just for a year, or for an economic cycle, but in this generation."

With this assurance from the chancellor, how could anyone expect bankers to forego juicy profits and bonuses by avoiding innovative but unduly risky practices? Because of the large size and global reach of Britain's financial sector, and the many newfangled financial instruments it created and marketed, Mr. Brown cannot honestly deny all responsibility for Britain's recession.

Given these historic facts, Britain's Labour legislators should think again about sticking with the prime minister. Choosing a new leader with integrity and managerial competence is the party's best chance to win greater respect from voters.

Mr. Marsden, a member of the Council of the Centre for Policy Studies, was formerly an operations adviser at the World Bank and senior economist at the International Labor Organization.

The Wall Street Journal 15 June 2009

At York station yesterday, the Prince of Wales unveiled the nameplate of Tornado, the first mainline railway locomotive to be built in Britain for many years. Tornado just happens to be a steam engine, a slightly modernised recreation of a London and North Eastern Railway express passenger "Pacific" of 60 years ago.

Created over 18 years and at a cost of £3m by the A1 Locomotive Trust in Darlington, Tornado has captured the hearts of railway enthusiasts worldwide. Network Rail was astonished by the sheer scale and enthusiasm of the camera-toting crowds who turned up - all ages, classes, colours, genders and creeds - to witness the muscular apple green locomotive's first arrival at King's Cross. News of Tornado's exploits has been reported around the world, including China, where most heavy industry seems to be rooted today.

When Prince Charles officially named Tornado, it was against the backdrop of the sweeping curve of York's 1870s train shed, an adventure in cast-iron Victorian gothic designed by Thomas Prosser and William Peachey, and a properly Olympian setting for an Olympian locomotive. Within sight of those on the platform was York Minster, a commanding example of English craft, architecture and resolve. Overhead, a flight of RAF Tornado jets roared past. For a few precious minutes, York harboured a stirring gathering of British design and engineering excellence, a legacy to savour ...

Turn now to the scene enacted a fortnight ago at Stratford, east London, where the mayor of London, the secretary of state for communities and the Olympics minister unveiled "legacy plans" for the 2012 Olympics. Now that prized private funding has vanished, the legacy will be paid for by the public purse. It had better be good. As good as York Minster, York station, a fly past of the RAF's finest and Tornado, the green engine stealing hearts away.

There will be lots and lots of homes, zero-carbon, of course, based on German and Swedish, rather than English, precedent and connected by footpaths and cycleways around a determinedly uninspired park. There will be a National Skills Academy for sports and leisure industries, rock concerts, an "Olympic university" and other things. What things? Well, you know, small, environmentally friendly things. Anyway, it will all be "world class", or about as enticing as a bowl of cold porridge ...

If we were serious about creating a legacy from the Olympics, we would do everything we could to establish the latest forms of manufacturing here. We might, of course, even choose to build the next generation of high-speed trains here. Such industry would mean young people learning valuable and enjoyable skills, a future workforce with responsible and uplifting jobs, and a solid economic base on which to build a post-financial services dependent economy.

Sadly, British politicians tend to have little care for manufacturing, railways and British jobs. Yesterday the Prince of Wales evoked the spirit of a manufacturing and design legacy we could have - in ultra-modern form - but which we will reject as a matter of course in favour of unimaginative, posturing "urban regeneration", which will see the East End of London little better off than before - collectively stacking the shelves of Hadean supermarkets rather than building the modern equivalent of the Olympian Tornado.

Guardian 20 February 2009

Extinction of the engineers

The Audit of War

There has been anger over the government's decision to award a £7.5bn contract to build a fleet of inter-city trains to Japanese firm Hitachi.

The government said the contract for the "super express" trains would "create and safeguard" 12,500 UK jobs.

But the Conservatives said the transport secretary had not provided details to back up the jobs claim.

Unions have called for urgent talks with the government over how much of the work will be done in the UK.

The stock will replace ageing high-speed trains on the Great Western and East Coast main lines.

The consortium awarded the contract, called Agility Trains, is made up of John Laing, Hitachi and Barclays Bank.

The rival consortium which missed out included Bombardier, the only company making trains in the UK, which employs more than 2,000 workers at its Derby factory ...

... Shadow Transport Secretary Theresa Villiers said the announcement was "typical spin" from the government.

"Only around 500, at most of the 12,500 jobs, announced today will be created in the UK by the train builder Hitachi and Labour have produced no convincing evidence to back up the rest of their claims on jobs.

"This announcement raises further questions about Gordon Brown's claims about British jobs for British workers. Geoff Hoon needs to stop the spin and tell the UK's hard pressed train manufacturing industry the real truth about his decision on replacing intercity trains."

Derby North Labour MP Bob Laxton said the decision was bad news for the area.

"This is a crass decision which gives the Japanese an opportunity of getting into the UK market. I don't believe for one moment the figure of 12,500 jobs because work will be brought into the UK from overseas," he said.

Agility Trains said it was committed to spending 70% of the contract value in the UK, adding that Hitachi and John Laing expected to create 2,500 skilled engineering jobs in the UK, in train manufacturing, construction and maintenance. ...

BBC NEWS 12 February 2009

Fast train to futility

Spin claims over £7.5bn train contract

Trying to meet the desire by most people to own their own home "has been a disaster" for UK housing policy, a Guardian conference was told today.

The chief executive of the National Housing Federation, David Orr, said the aspiration for home ownership should no longer drive policy.

"We have used it as the policy determinant and that's absolutely wrong," he told the SocietyGuardian housing conference in London.

Orr said government policy could no longer be "seduced by the monochrome conversation that says 'owning good, renting bad'" ...

Guardian 29 January 2009

New plan to revive social house building

National Housing Federation

Northern Rock

Britain needs to do more to boost manufacturing, even to the extent of formulating some kind of industrial policy, the Director-General of the CBI has warned. Richard Lambert told The Times that there was an urgent need to bolster manufacturing ahead of major infrastructure work and as the economic slowdown puts more pressure on industry. ...

Mr Lambert said: "Are we right to be the only industrial country not to have anything in terms of industrial policy?" ...

Mr Lambert wants the Government and business to do more to keep key manufacturing bases in Britain. He asked: "Was it sensible of us to sell Westinghouse to Toshiba just when we were on the brink of the biggest nuclear build programme?"

The CBI chief said that he had been persuaded by arguments from Sir John Rose, the Rolls-Royce chief executive, that a better manufacturing base could promote social cohesion because it offers more jobs with mid-level salaries than the extremes generated by the City. Mr Lambert also fears that social cohesion may be compromised if Britain has to import large numbers of specialist workers, such as the tens of thousands of engineers expected to be needed for Crossrail, rather than find home-grown workers. ...

To help to boost manufacturing, Mr Lambert believes that international companies looking to take on large projects in Britain should have some operations here to build up a base, rather than just selling kit into the UK. ...

He also believes that tax policy should change to encourage companies to remain in Britain as more look to relocate.

Mr Lambert will also call for more government money for the Technology Strategy Board, which promotes innovation in industry.

Mr Lambert's comments came as manufacturing activity fell for the fourth consecutive month ...

The Times 02 September 2008

A few weeks ago the QE2, one of the world's last ocean liners, sailed into Greenock docks - a final homecoming for the 40-year-old ship, built by John Brown & Co at Clydebank. Next year the retiring Cunard liner sails to Dubai where, demoted to serve as a floating hotel and casino, her mighty engines and deep hooters will be silenced.

The many thousands of people who came to watch this beautiful ship, as the RAF's Red Arrows performed aerial reels above her, will surely have felt as I did - sad that the Clyde is quite unable to produce such an internationally admired work of design and engineering today. In our knowledge-based New British economy we like to believe that making nothing much beyond money, while replacing engineering works with vast, energy-gobbling Shanghai-style shopping malls, or "urban regeneration projects", is somehow clever.

Just days after the QE2's tumultuous arrival on the Clyde, the Association of Consultant Engineers (Ace) revealed that Britain has a shortage of 20,000 engineers, a figure likely to rise by 4,000 next year. To meet demand, Ace is calling on the Home Office to relax immigration rules so that civil, structural, environmental and building services engineers can be headhunted from around the world to do the jobs that we oh so very postmodern British snub.

And yet, because we want ever more major engineering-driven projects, including the 2012 Olympics, Crossrail, new high-speed railways, and ambitious "urban regeneration" schemes the length and breadth of the country, we need an army, navy and airforce of engineers to realise them.

Just as we require ever more cheap labour from across the world to clean our offices, sweep our streets, drive our buses, pick our cockles and generally wipe our collective bottom, now we need engineers from Poland, India, China and elsewhere to design and build the infrastructure we find increasingly hard to make for our digital selves.

We think it clever for foreigners to do our dirty, and now our practical and even creative, work for us. Eventually, though, we will lose out to nations willing to shape and make things, and who still take pleasure in what we see as grubby old heavy-duty engineering.

The Germans clearly enjoy making things while enjoying a high standard of living. Bavaria is bristling with knowledge-based industries, while boasting many "old fashioned" engineering enterprises. On its Thuringian borders, the Meiningen works of the Deutsche Bahn (German state railways) has recently built a high-pressure steam boiler for the A1 Locomotive Trust, a Darlington-based organisation currently completing the first British mainline express steam locomotive in more than 50 years. This might seem quixotic, but no British company could take on a work that will give pleasure to countless people. A nation of call-centre operatives and customer service facility managers, we look on, stupefied, as foreigners weld and rivet for us. In an age of 300kph electric trains crisscrossing the Federal Republic, the idea of making a steam locomotive boiler is something the German railway is able to take in its stride.

In Finland, the land of Nokia, the Aker Yards in Helsinki, and other major cities, continue to design, engineer and construct the world's largest passenger ships, among them the Freedom of the Seas class for Royal Caribbean International. Even bigger vessels are on the drawing board. The Finns, it seems, are quietly content engineering ships that are much bigger than the QE2 while mass-producing the latest in lightweight digital mass-consumption technology.

In Britain we have come to believe that we are a nation of consumers rather than producers, that life is all about borrowing unfeasible sums of money to buy the disposable gewgaws we crave. But even shopping malls and the complex infrastructure underpinning them have to be engineered by someone. Still, leave that to foreigners. We'll complain, of course, as they arrive to take on the senior jobs we increasingly refuse to do, but now that we have begun to look upon heavy-duty engineering projects in much the same way as forest tribes might have gazed, uncomprehendingly, at Roman aqueducts two thousand years ago, what else can we do?

· Jonathan Glancey is the Guardian's architecture critic

The Guardian 15 October 2007

Right from economics 101, we teach the students to obliterate the difference between people and things (labour and capital are simply two factors of production, never mind that only labour can be brought to witness in court as an accessory to a crime).

They learn that economics is about what is and not what ought to be (normative questions are not a concern), and that wants are limitless by definition.

At a macro level, they learn to see the economy as a multiplication of individuals who are alike, and who behave as if they have complete information and can form rational expectations which defeat the purpose of policy intervention.

Economics, as it is taught in its neoclassical mainstream version across the world, is a travesty.

It is shamelessly ideological while purporting to be scientific as the social physics (the very name Econom-ics was brought in over a hundred years ago to replace the older term ‘political economy’ and make it sound more scientific!).

The macro has no microfoundations, there is lack of empirical contact with real world ...

Nitasha Kaul openDemocracy 20 April 2009

Blog in response

"It is positive that protectionism continues to be off the agenda ..."   (Writes Nitashas Kaul)

Why?

Protectionism was not 'off the agenda' in Abraham Lincoln's America, nor was it 'off the agenda' in Wilhelmine Germany.

Nor should it be off the agenda for present day Somalia, plagued by overfishing.   

The neoliberal 'free' markets are attempting to create the conditions under which Adam Smith's 'invisble hand' theory can come to perfection.

There are several severe flaws with this theory:

1. We do not - and by the nature of current corporate-capitalism, cannot - have markets in which there are so many small players - and only small players - that Joseph Stiglitz's 'asymmetries' cannot interfere.    [JS]

2. The tenets of the Washington Consensus subordinate societal needs - and the (social embedding of the) economy - to the creation of the invisible hand.

As Paul Treanor puts it,

"Neoliberalism is a philosophy in which the existence and operation of a market are valued in themselves ... and where the operation of a market or market-like structure is seen as an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action, and substituting for all previously existing ethical beliefs."    [PT]

3. Markets demonstrate an inherent short-termist, myopic, focus on profit.

This should not surprise us. If economic decisions are taken via the Pareto efficiency paradigm, consideration of societal and ecological dimensions are not factored in.

The position in the UK, which has probably embraced globalisation more fully than any other country - including the USA - has created a situation in which global finance has an unhealthy dominance of the economy, leaving a narrowed range of employment in which industrial activity is a shell of its former self.

One of the side-effects of this distortion, is that before the current recession there were more people on incapacity benefit with mental health issues, than there were people unemployed.    [LSE]

In pursuit of the Washington Consensus, successive British governments have reduced spending on mental health, thus, whilst creating the conditions under which mental health deteriorates, the services needed to address the problems have been weakened.  [OJ]

One of the more serious consequences is the criminalisation of sufferers of more severe forms of mental illness. In this case there are two sets of victims of Pareto efficiencies and the Washington Consensus.    [VCD]

It is hard to envision this kind of dystopia being ameliorated by the introduction of the Tobin Tax, since this proposal implies a global dimension to government which is even further removed from real communities, and would probably end up replicating the lack of democracy inherent in the European Union.

I draw attention to the fact that the EU hovers between its possibility as a supranational institution - which turns its component states into members of a federation - or its present as a collection of sovereign states bound by a treaty which started life as a constitution.

openDemocracy  20 April 2009

Protectionism: is it so bad?

A Moral Climate

Governmentality

The mechanistic approach to economics has failed

'Unto this last'

Why money messes with your mind

Why we need a proper study of mankind