Matthew Lynn is a financial columnist and author of ‘Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis’ and ‘The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031’
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In Germany, the DAX index – the benchmark for the economy – is already down 4 per cent today. In France, the benchmark CAC-40 is down by 3.3 per cent – heading toward the low points seen in the spring. Across Europe a stock-market crash is starting to unfold. Is it a panic? An overreaction
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When they were first introduced in the spring, lockdowns were meant to be a way of controlling the spread of Covid-19. But, in much the same way that viruses themselves sometimes do, they have mutated into something far more sinister and potentially far more dangerous – a way of waging war on every form of
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Infections are rising. Hospitals will be overwhelmed. And very soon the vulnerable will start to die. From today, the Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford is closing down Wales with one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe, shuttering all but essential shops. For the next 17 days, hotels, pubs, restaurants and for a while, schools, will
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More help for bars and restaurants. Grants for businesses that are forced to close. Additional funding for the self-employed. The Chancellor Rishi Sunak has started shaking the magic money tree again, promising extra assistance to keep the economy alive during a second wave of Covid-19. There is a problem, however, and as the Chancellor runs
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More jobs will be lost in the long run. Businesses will go under. And government debt will soar even higher. Labour’s Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds is pushing the argument that a circuit breaker — that is a short, sharp national lockdown — will be cheaper in the long run. It will keep the virus under
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Border posts have been dismantled. The armed guards and sniffer dogs have been retired. And the surly looking official who glances at you suspiciously before curtly handing back your passport has long since been consigned to the pages of dusty old spy thrillers. Over the last couple of decades, if the European Union had one
Gold isn’t used for much except wedding rings or storing wealth
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Fake companies set up under false names. Phantom employees invented to claim compensation. Start-ups trousering loans for ventures that don’t exist. Meals that were never eaten. The British economy has been in a bad place for the last six months. But it turns out one small corner of the economy has been flourishing: defrauding the
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It will involve hundreds of hours of haggling over thousands of different products. It will have to pass torturous debates in Congress. And it will have to survive an election cycle or two. There are lots of hurdles in the way of a British trade deal with the United States. But now we have perhaps
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34 min listen
Vaccines are normally in the realm of scientists; but not this time as world leaders race to be the first. (00:50) Brexit is heating up, but is the government in a stronger position than it seems? (13:35) And a modern day Caligula – the life and times of the Thai king Rama X. (22:40) With
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It could be the most audacious piece of political theatre of modern times. At the end of next month, just a week or so before Americans choose their next president, we could see Donald Trump standing on the White House lawn in front of a handful of friendly journalists, rolling up his sleeve and looking
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Even a politician as tenaciously optimistic as Matt Hancock was struggling to put any positive spin on it: the world has woken up to the disappointing news that trials of the Oxford vaccine for Covid-19 had been paused after an adverse reaction in one patient. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was one of seven in Phase 3
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It is, by any measure, a heck of a lot of pizza. The ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme turns out to have been a huge success. We learned today that is was used more than a 100 million times in August. In many cities, it was virtually impossible to get a table from Monday
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Donald Trump is, perhaps predictably enough, pulling out of the World Health’s Organisation’s global vaccine programme. The Russian president Vladimir Putin has been cutting every corner to get a Russian shot out first, while allegedly sending spies to steal the Oxford one. And China is racing to have the first vaccine on the market, already
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No more commuting. An end to irritating conversations with slightly dull colleagues. The boss can’t monitor how much time you spend on Facebook anymore, and you have plenty of time to bake sourdough bread/try out online pilates/read the whole of Proust (delete as applicable). A few of us might even be able to carry on
A surging Nasdaq and Dow doesn’t indicate a healthy economy
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It didn’t help that it was unveiled by a swaggering Vladimir Putin. Or that it was called Sputnik V – a hardly subtle reference to the Cold War. Nor that we have grown used to Russian meddling and mis-information. Even so, there is still something a little surprising about the hostility towards the Russian vaccine
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There are lots of different ways of measuring the terrible state of the global economy. The collapse in overall output. The fall in trade as ports and airports empty. The trillions printed by central banks, and the soaring price of gold as investors lose faith in a recovery. But one is surely this: keeping the
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The President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, took some time out from presiding over the worst collapse in economic history last week to deliver a short lecture on how women leaders have proved better at dealing with Covid-19 than men. According to the impeccably politically correct French politician, they were more ‘caring’, better
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Just imagine what would happen if real money was at stake. Over the last four days, the leaders of the European Union have been furiously haggling over their Coronavirus Rescue Fund. France’s President Macron has been banging the table angrily, the Dutch have taken on the role vacated by the British of the ‘bad Europeans’,
