Should the Bank of England be able to adjust bank capital ratios to match economic health? September 19, 2012 YES David B Smith There are two main reasons why granting the Bank of England the power to impose capital ratios may prove helpful – macroeconomic and prudential. The essential macroeconomic aim of monetary policy should be to maintain a smooth and steady growth of broad money. It’s difficult to do this with the traditional [...]
Rapid Responses September 19, 2012 National defence [Re: Could a BAE-EADS merger prove a danger to national interests?, yesterday] This merger raises questions that have yet to receive adequate answers. There are obvious implications to losing the strategic totem that has been BAE: its work is closely related to UK national defence, and we should not risk it without careful [...]
A humanities education is the best preparation for a life of leadership September 18, 2012 THERE will always be a need for higher education to produce the experts essential to advanced economies. Scientists, engineers, doctors and lawyers are indispensable, and universities will always train them because there will always be the resources for training them. However, there is a curious blindness to the equally great need in our complex societies [...]
The iPhone5 may be boosting GDP by even more than JP Morgan predict September 18, 2012 APPLE’S iPhone5 has already smashed sales records. More than 2m online orders were placed on the first day that consumers could make purchases over the web. So it’s little wonder that JP Morgan has estimated that iPhone5 sales could add as much as 0.5 per cent to American GDP. These numbers have attracted criticism. After [...]
Ten golden rules of investing September 18, 2012 Unless you need your money back soon, you should think long term and avoid getting caught up in the daily noise of markets. This is for two reasons. First, it makes sense to align your own investment time horizon with that of the companies in which you invest. You’ll find that all good companies – [...]
As doubts grow about a BAE-EADS merger, could it prove a danger to national interests? September 18, 2012 YES Ben Wallace As things stand, the UK government is going to be asked to approve a deal that sees the majority of Britain’s defence industrial base being taken over by a company half-owned by the German, French and Spanish states, with a headquarters in France, and a German chief executive. All the big defence [...]
Rapid Responses September 18, 2012 Occupy a year on [Re: One year after the start of Occupy Wall Street, has the movement had any positive impact?, yesterday] Sam Bowman is correct that the Occupy Movement asked the right questions about the close relationship between big business and governments. But its answers weren’t always asinine. There was a strong free market [...]
Scrapping dysfunctional GCSEs will return rigour to British classrooms September 17, 2012 CONSIDERING the howls of outrage that greeted this year’s GCSE results, the reaction to Michael Gove’s new English Baccalaureate Certificate has been surprisingly muted. This is not altogether surprising: GCSEs are corrupt and corrupting, and it’s hard to find a teacher with anything good to say about them. Under New Labour, ministers showed little evidence [...]
Fiscal stimulus: Too much of a good thing can prove a country’s undoing September 17, 2012 IN THEORY, when the economy is performing below its potential, governments can get things moving with a well-designed fiscal stimulus. Sadly, in practice, a stimulus is rarely well-designed, and even their greatest advocates are forced to ignore history and argue that “this time will be different”. Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz has admitted that the [...]
Ten golden rules of investing September 17, 2012 IT IS often tempting for companies to expand capacity or even invest in areas outside their core area of expertise. One should be very wary of such ambition, as it naturally means a reduction in focus on core capacity, let alone the implications for balance sheets. A focus on the top line tends to be [...]