Economy

In 2018, the Equality and Human Rights Commission commissioned and promoted a report which predicted that an extra 1.5 million children would be plunged into (relative) child poverty by 2021/22 if the government implemented Universal Credit. The proportion of children living in (relative) poverty would, it said, rise from 29 per cent to the unprecedented figure of 41.3 per cent. Portes’ prediction was a totem for all economic forecasting, most of which is little better than guesswork and should not be taken seriously If you think such prognostication is beyond the remit of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, I can only concur. The report was written by Howard Reed

So, things really are different this time. The US Federal Reserve has decided to raise its Federal Funds Rate (its main interest rate) by a quarter-point, to 4.75 per cent – 5 per cent, in spite of a banking crisis that has seen two large banks fail in the past fortnight. For the past two decades, this sort of thing didn’t happen. Under the unwritten laws of the ‘Greenspan put’, the Fed could be relied upon to provide some form of stimulus at the first sign of financial trouble. It began with the collapse of the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management in 1998, when the Fed put together a

For more than a decade, bitcoin bores have been banging on about cryptocurrency as the future of money. The emergence and spectacular growth of digital currencies, according to these evangelists, prove that the financial system upon which we all depend is broken. Bitcoin was after all created in 2009, after the great meltdown of 2008, as a revolutionary concept to fight the corrosive global power of central banking. Bitcoin was pitched as the new digital gold. It was limited in supply and could not be centrally controlled – its value couldn’t be distorted by quantitative easing and morally bankrupt governments hooked on debt. Bitcoin wasn’t just for buying illegal stuff

Another Sunday, another banking takeover swiftly arranged before markets open on Monday morning. This time Credit Suisse has agreed to be bought by fellow Swiss bank UBS for 0.5 Swiss Francs a share – less than a third of its closing price on Friday and less than a tenth of what the bank was worth a year ago. A banking collapse which was beginning to look inevitable in spite of a 50 billion Swiss Franc bailout by the Swiss central bank on Friday has been averted, market turmoil has been avoided, or postponed, jobs have been saved (although many are expected to be lost in London as Credit Suisse’s investment banking

No victory is ever final in politics – and the wrecking-ball of lockdowns now seems to have destroyed almost every success of the 2012-20 welfare reforms. The workless numbers are again as bad as they they were under Labour. People who stopped working during lockdowns never quite got back into it and the UK has done a worse job than almost any other country at rebuilding its post-pandemic workforce. In 2009 I was filling Coffee House with attacks on the Labour government for keeping so many on benefits. And the story now? See below. Remember, this joblessness is not induced by recession and layoffs but incubated by welfare to produce

First the good news. Unlike the IMF, which predicted in January that the UK economy would have a worse 2023 than even Russia, the OECD’s latest forecast has Britain outperforming Russia. Now the bad news: the OECD still predicts the UK to perform worse than any European country other than Russia.  Forecasts aside, the actual data for the UK economy is a slightly improving story Its latest bulletin, published this morning, sees Britain shrinking by 0.2 per cent in 2023, compared with growth of 0.3 per cent for Germany, 0.7 per cent for France and 0.8 per cent for the Euro area as a whole. The Russian economy, by the way,

Jeremy Hunt has announced plans to extend the 30 hours a week of ‘free’ childcare for three and four year olds to include babies as young as nine-months old. This expansion of childcare provision has been hailed by the Chancellor as a measure to allow mothers to return to employment if they want to; it will also, according to Hunt, help boost the economy. But has anyone paused to think about the impact on the children themselves – and families? The truth is that Hunt’s proposed changes aren’t a win for mothers, children, and families as a whole. Why? Because the childcare plans suggest that a mother’s worth comes from

Jeremy Hunt has just delivered his second Budget as Chancellor. The top message the Chancellor wants to push is that Britain will avoid recession. But the Office for Budget Responsibility’s report suggests immigration may be the real story. Among the policy announcements were an extension to the energy price guarantee, currently at £2,500, to July (effectively scrapping the price hike), committing £5 billion to fund free childcare for one and two year-olds and abolishing the pension Lifetime Allowance. But what else did we learn from today’s Budget? You can follow these metrics every day on the budget page of The Spectator’s data hub.