Last year my family rented a house for a week near the small Welsh town of Cardigan. It’s a small town of 4,000 people, on the coast and kind of in the middle of nowhere. In the past it was a significant port, but that was a long time ago. More recently, it had a [...]
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Britain’s debt problem: it’s not the government
Like many countries, Britain is following austerity policies at the moment, paring back government services to try and get debt under control. Every new budget or economic speech is analysed by City commentators. “Have they done enough?” they ask. “How will the markets respond?” It’s a little hypocritical of the City to wag a finger [...]
New year sales, debt addiction
Every Christmas, a strange disconnection develops across the media. In a bizarre failure to see the bigger picture, the Business sections decry the reluctance of consumers to spend, while the consumer pages lament the cost of Christmas. I first noticed it in 2008, and it’s no different today. Here are some of this year’s stories: [...]
Tax evasion: the top ten biggest losers
Globally, $1 in every 6 goes illegally untaxed, squirreled away through clever accounting, tax havens and shadow companies. The Tax Justice Network has calculated the size of the international shadow economy and drawn up a list of countries and what they lose to tax evasion. Here are the top ten biggest losers, with the estimated [...]
The Shard and the curse of the skyscraper
In six months time London will be the proud possessor of the tallest building in Europe. The Shard, currently splintering skywards on the South Bank, will stand over 1,000 feet tall on completion. If the architects are to be believed, it will be a glorious monument to London’s ambition. But the ‘tallest building’ game is [...]
Two lessons from Schumacher for stimulating the economy
There are all kinds of things in Schumacher’s writings that are ripe for rediscovery. Here are just two that caught my eye in my recent re-readings as being particularly relevant: The energy connection As a young man, Schumacher studied the problems of his country’s reconstruction efforts after the First World War. Germany’s coal production was [...]
Has Britain experienced ‘peak stuff’?
Environmental writer and analyst Chris Goodall discovered something rather intriguing recently – that the amount of stuff Britain uses peaked in around 2001-2003 and has gone into decline. Shortly after the millennium, we started using fewer material resources to run the economy – oil, water, paper, fertiliser, cement – you name it, chances are we’re [...]
The network that runs the world
If you could map the connections between the world’s most powerful corporations, you could work out which ones were the most important, and which ones were critical to the functioning of the whole – the infamous ‘too big to fail’ companies. That’s what three systems analysts from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have done, [...]
Where are the world’s safest banks?
Since every country regulates its banking in its own way, financial stability varies immensely from country to country. Some places value stability more than growth, and ask more of their banks. Others relax regulation in order to encourage the financial sector, which delivers growth at the risk of increased instability, bailouts and banking collapses. Comparing [...]
Fire your bank on November 5th
In Britain, the 5th of November is Guy Fawkes Night, which commemorates the failure of a plot to blow up the House of Parliament in 1605. It’s traditionally celebrated with fireworks, bonfires, and the burning in effigy of the aforementioned and rather unfortunate Mr Fawkes. Fawke’s other legacy is the Guy Fawke’s Mask, as drawn [...]
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