What with the ongoing eurozone crisis, G8 summits and NATO confabs, politicians from around the world continue to dominate the headlines – but things don’t seem to be getting any better. Amid all that hot air, though, were a couple of nice pearls of ...
Blog - Wednesday 23 May 2012
Long queues are a clear indication of supply failing to meet demand. In the Soviet Union, you queued for bread and butter. In the UK not too long ago, you queued for the GPO to install a telephone. The mismatch was usually due to some government agency ...
Blog - Tuesday 01 May 2012
Lost in the noise of Wednesday’s news that the UK has slipped into a double-dip recession was the report Tuesday on the government’s financial performance for its fiscal year ending March 31. A picture is said to be worth a thousand words so here’s 3,000 ...
Blog - Thursday 26 April 2012
This week’s obsession of our chattering classes has been an alleged failure of Prime Minister David Cameron’s government to implement a coherent strategy for an apparently flagging agenda. Clearly, bringing the nation’s appalling financial condition ...
Blog - Thursday 26 April 2012
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." ...
Blog - Friday 20 April 2012
You can always count on Argentina for abject lessons on how not to run a country. That’s always been painful for its citizens but useful for the rest of us to see how hair-brained, populist schemes just don’t work. ...
Blog - Tuesday 17 April 2012
Large pots of money invariably draw politicians like bees to honey, especially when those bees are already sucking dry every other pot in sight. ...
Blog - Tuesday 10 April 2012
Germany’s Bundesbank, that symbol of sobriety and caution, reports that banks appointing a higher proportion of female executives results in “a more risky conduct of business.” Yes, that’s right, women aren’t the traditionally viewed paragons of ...
Blog - Monday 02 April 2012
David Cameron’s challenge upon taking office was monumental. After 13 years of Gordon Brown’s fiscal incontinence and Tony Blair’s failure to reform public services, national debt levels are incomprehensible and the government sector bloated and ...
Blog - Tuesday 20 March 2012
I became a fully conscious taxpayer a couple of years before Montreal hosted the 1976 Olympic games. Those games are probably best remembered as the ones that started the modern era of over-blown, over-budget and financially disastrous Olympic games. ...
Blog - Friday 09 March 2012
Remember pension tax simplification in 2006? At the time, it seemed like a reasonably good idea - reduce the patchwork of legislation built-up by successive governments to encourage retirement provision by simplifying the previous eight tax regimes into ...
Blog - Tuesday 28 February 2012
Oh what a tangled web we weave, ...
Blog - Monday 27 February 2012
Last week, BBC Radio 4’s PM show each day profiled an unemployed person. On Friday, it featured Leanna Brown, 20 years old, a single mum of a two-year old, living in Sheffield and unemployed for two years. ...
Blog - Wednesday 22 February 2012
“A spokesman for the Federation of Small Businesses , while hopeful that credit easing would cut the cost of lending, said that peer-to-peer forms of lending – where individuals lend directly to businesses – needed to be explored.” What’s to ...
Blog - Wednesday 15 February 2012
I’m sure the folks in Brussels-land mean well with every intention of making the world a better place but you do wonder what planet they live on. Maybe it’s the dull weather or the flat vistas of the Belgian plain that give us Viviane Reding, vice ...
Blog - Wednesday 08 February 2012
Well, we’ve stripped those Royal Bank of Scotland rascals of their titles and bonuses and the surge of optimism pulsing through the economy is palpable. The stock market is soaring, businesses have launched ambitious investment schemes and dole queues ...
Blog - Thursday 02 February 2012
Who in their right mind would want to be a businessperson these days? It’s always been tough creating and growing a business - failure is more common than success but the potential for reward and the thrill of the chase still appeal to the energetic, the ...
Blog - Monday 30 January 2012
Recognising a great opportunity when he sees it, US President Obama has announced a series of measures to boost the demand for natural gas whose price there has recently plunged on surging supply due to ever improving extraction technology and rapid ...
Blog - Thursday 26 January 2012
Led by the UK’s own prime minister, markets are under assault for causing all our current economic woes. Blaming “market failure”, David Cameron is trying to outbid Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband for policies to reform the market system. ...
Blog - Monday 23 January 2012
It was a good week for believers in markets. Once again, they have delivered what no amount of political hectoring, wishful thinking or global planning could as quickly or efficiently. ...
Blog - Monday 16 January 2012
Same old problems got you down in this new year? Budget deficits, euro crisis, immigration? Ed Milliband’s promise of fairness in tough times doesn’t stir the soul? Thirty minutes quicker by train to Birmingham on HS2 a big yawn? Well, here’s something ...
Blog - Wednesday 11 January 2012
An actuary isn’t where dead actors are buried; it’s someone who tells you about a problem you never thought you had and in a way you can’t understand. Actuaries are the butt of jokes that they’re dull folk – accountants without the charisma. Their ...
Blog - Monday 09 January 2012
Well, that was a depressing kick off to 2012. Have you ever seen so much doom and gloom in New Year forecasts, starting with our own Prime Minister and on out to every pundit, analyst, politico, clergy and media outlet? ...
Blog - Tuesday 03 January 2012
Recent weeks have seen a flurry of articles about the upcoming release of The Iron Lady, featuring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher. A lot of these have been drearily predictable – superb performance of a dynamic personality but, heaven forbid, the ...
Blog - Monday 19 December 2011
Friday night in a north London pub and the downstairs room has a bunch of old blues musicians wailing about hard luck, bad women and hittin’ the road again. All those train whistles, pawn shops and late-night soup kitchens, however, seem a bit out of ...
Blog - Tuesday 13 December 2011
