Right said Fred – write me a cheque, that is
27 Feb 2009 [1 Comment | 201 views]
Dear Lord Myners, went the letter from Sir Fred, former boss at RBS…"[you] indicated that you were aware of my entitlement and that no further 'gestures' would be required." And with those words, yet another can of worms was revealed.
So, the government’s City Minister, Lord Myners, knew all along about Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension. And then it got worse, it turns out Sir Fred’s pension payment was discretionary. Discretionary – has such an innocent sounding word ever taken on such an ominous note?
It's funny, but if you read the word 'pension' quickly, it can look a little like 'prison'. So
Bonus shock: Lloyds TSB makes profit
27 Feb 2009 [2 Comments | 235 views]
A couple of weeks ago, the latest shock horror story to hit the front pages related to plans by Lloyds Bank to pay its staff bonuses. How very dare they, said the press.
Some of the more thoughtful media pointed out that most of the bonuses were paid to staff on low wages – that they worked out at an average of £1,000 per member of staff, many of whom were earning around £17,000 per year. Hardly the stuff of excess.
It was argued here that it was a non story, and that by so vilifying a bonus, which on closer examination seemed actually quite modest, some media had demonstrated once and for all that they don’t care about truth or balance. Instead, they seemed to do little more than reinforce every overreaction, in turn compounding the crisis we are living through.
But not all agreed. Some argued that it was irrelevant how small the bonus was, that if a company does badly then bonuses should not be paid.
Well now we know a little bit more. The first ever set of results from Lloyds Banking Group are out, and actually the Lloyds TSB bit was quite good.
Overall
Consumers see gradual lift
27 Feb 2009 [1 Comment | 205 views]
Here is some good news about a possible recovery in the UK. No, no, really. Take your cynical hat off, there are no catches. There are reasons to think the UK may recover a tad sooner than originally expected. It depends, of course. It could go wrong, but there is reason for a healthy dollop of hope. And this is why.
The Indian and Swedish tale
27 Feb 2009 [0 Comments | 214 views]
And from home to away. Maybe it will make a nice change to see how things are doing in two economies we perhaps don’t hear quite as much about as we should: from the rich north, Sweden, and from the heart of the developing world, India.
market’s
26 Feb 2009 [0 Comments | 195 views]
RBS storms to new record: biggest loss in British corporate history
26 Feb 2009 [3 Comments | 181 views]
Well, it is a bold plan all right.
RBS has made the biggest loss in British corporate history. In fact, it thrashed the previous record. As you no doubt know, or if you don’t you will be hearing it on the news for the rest of the day, its former boss Sir Fred Goodwin seems to be getting a pension worth £650,000 a year. Although this publication has argued the venon aimed at the bankers is over done, it is pretty hard to see Sir Fred's pension in anything other than terms which would fill a swear box in record time. More of that in a few paragraphs.
This morning has also seen the unravelling of the latest wheeze from the goverment to save a bank, and this time it really is interesting.
So, RBS
House prices: which way now?
26 Feb 2009 [0 Comments | 159 views]
You may recall, last month Halifax rather put the cat amongst the pigeons when its latest housing survey reported a 1.9 per cent rise in house prices. Was this a one off, or an early sign of a change in trend? Was the great housing crash nearing its end?
One obvious puzzle relating to the Halifax figures was the way they contradicted the data from Nationwide covering the same month. The Nationwide had prices down 1.3 per cent, so how do you explain that? Well, some argued that, actually, the time periods the Halifax and Nationwide covered were slightly different, with some of the data which made up the Halifax survey coming later.
So all eyes then turned to the Nationwide report for February. Would we see confirmation of the rise reported by the Halifax a few weeks ago?
This morning the Nationwide released its February survey, and this is what it had to say.
The natural path for yuan is down, says guru
26 Feb 2009 [1 Comment | 190 views]
As you no doubt know, one of the hottest topics today in politics, and in particular between the world’s only superpower and the world’s next superpower, is that China manipulates its currency...
...And yet, according to the economist Brian Reading, who made his name after predicting the collapse in the Japanese economy in the late 1980s, if China really did allow markets to operate freely, then the yuan may actually depreciate, and do the precise opposite of what American politicians claim.
Japanese trade dives like kamikaze
26 Feb 2009 [2 Comments | 166 views]
There are dives, and there are dives. But not even Christian Ronaldo could match the dive seen in Japanese trade in January. Funnily enough, however, Japan’s GDP may not suffer quite as much from the decline as you may have thought.
In Japan, everything seems to be down, down and down.
Japanese exports collapsed 45.7 per cent in January, on a year ago. This takes Japanese exports to their lowest level for ten years. Not really the kind of news an economy coming out of 20 years of malaise needs.
The migrants begin their exodus home
25 Feb 2009 [0 Comments | 123 views]
Cast your mind back to 2007 and before. Back then when things were going swimmingly well, one of the hot topics of discussion was immigration.
These days, of course, immigration isn’t the topic it was. People are more concerned about their own jobs. But it is not difficult to see how current insecurities could spill over, and how, all of a sudden, Johnny Foreigner could get the blame for everything.
The call for British jobs for British workers did smell a little bit of that. No doubt Gordon Brown regrets those words. He should do, for that phrase has become the call of the xenophobes.
If you find yourself defending the cause of free trade and free movement of labour, and point out there are more British construction workers working in Italy, than Italian construction workers working in Britain, you may get a response along these lines: “Yea, but there aren’t many British construction workers working in Poland.”
That is one of the dangers in this crisis. Some economists hide behind their mathematical models, but don’t factor in human nature. There is a very real danger, right now, that the global economy could retreat on a tide of protectionism, with individual countries turning themselves into economic fortresses. Only bad can come out of that.
As for Eastern Europe, and the migrants from that region, we would just like to say that the problems in Emerging Europe are very serious. If you are not worried about what is going on in that part of the world, you should be. The latest economic projections are suggesting contractions in Emerging Europe that are of the kind of level that create violent conflict.
Let the xenophobes win the argument, and the ultimate result will be a UK economy that contracts, and finds itself on the corner of a Europe experiencing the biggest rise in social unrest since the period before the Second World War.
Anyway, that rant out of the way, some news is in on the migration of workers from Eastern Europe, and it's down, way down.
According to the Home Office, in the three months to December last year, there were
