Andrew Haldane

Andy Haldane is the chief executive of the RSA and the former chief economist at the Bank of England.

Wednesday

Andrew Haldane

Are we entering an unknowable future?

Neither of the UK’s main political parties is saying anything especially interesting about education. In an economy chronically short of skills – more than ten million people lack the skills they need to do their jobs effectively – that’s odd. The education cupboard is not entirely bare. Last week saw the latest instalment of the Prime Minister’s programme to support maths education to age 18. And a big number – more than £500 million – is being bunged at the UK’s numeracy problem through the government’s Multiply programme. This maths initiative has had its critics but, as vice-chair of the charity National Numeracy, I am not one of them. We are an innumerate nation: in the case of roughly eight million of us, our maths is no better than that of a primary-school child.

Thursday

Andrew Haldane

There’s a revolution — in banking

In 1925 Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, famously declared that he wished to see ‘finance less proud and industry more content’. In the light of the financial crisis, much the same refrain has been heard from policymakers and politicians over the past five years. How are we to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past? And how might the financial sector reinvent itself for the future? I wish to argue there are grounds for optimism. Out of the ashes of the financial crisis a new type of banking is emerging. Old business models are being rewritten and new entrants are driving change. Indeed, it’s possible that the financial sector is in the early throes of a miniature revolution, the like of which has swept through a number of other industries recently.