Money

Is Mark Zuckerberg losing his touch? Having just thrown tens of billions at his weird virtual-reality ‘metaverse’, only to see it flop with users, the Meta CEO and co-founder of Facebook appears to be spying another questionable new venture. It’s reportedly called Threads, a cloying techspeak name for what is essentially a rip-off of Twitter. You might think that the last thing the world needs is another Twitter, den of sanctimony and cancellation that it is. But not our Zuck. Threads appears to be an attempt to capitalise on the unease over at Twitter Towers, as advertisers and high-profile users alike have been rattled by Elon Musk’s unpredictable new leadership

The average two-year fixed mortgage now sits at 6 per cent, according to financial data group Moneyfacts – just below the 6.65 per cent reached in December last year, after the fallout from Liz Truss’s mini-Budget. Five-year fixed rates aren’t too far behind, at 5.7 per cent. For many of the 2.4 million homeowners whose mortgages are up for renewal between now and the end of next year, this is, at best, cause for alarm. At worst, it’s an alert to a crisis. Later this week, we’ll get last month’s inflation data – and the next rate update from the Bank of England. Threadneedle Street’s dilemma is only getting worse. Between

There are plenty of reasons for viewing today’s huge merger deal between the UK mobile networks of Vodafone and Three with suspicion. It could reduce choice for consumers. It may lead to job losses. And it is possible that they will downgrade their service even more than they already have, cut back on investment, and squeeze more money out of a captive market. Yet that is not quite the whole story. In fact, done right, the merger could even turn out to be a rare Brexit win.  Today’s tie-up between Vodafone and Three was widely expected. The two companies will combine their British networks, and will have 27 million users

‘There are obviously lessons to be learned,’ said Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey at today’s House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee. It was a point he repeated many times over, in reference to the inflation crisis that has plagued Britain for close to two years now. ‘We have to learn lessons from the experiences we’ve had, of course we must… We have to work out what those lessons are.’ But despite repeating this sentiment over and over again, Bailey could not meaningfully come up with one good example of such a lesson, nor could he go into much detail on the mistakes the Monetary Policy Committee has made over the

Is the government ready to start cutting taxes? After taking the burden to a post-war high, it seems ministers are preparing to change direction – in one area, anyway. This morning Jeremy Hunt announced that the energy levy on oil and gas companies, known as the ‘windfall tax’, will come to an end in 2028 – a direct response to growing fears that the effective 75 per cent tax on profits was driving business and investment out of the country. Divestment from the North Sea has become a heavily contested topic. Keir Starmer announced that Labour would ban all new production in the North Sea, perhaps putting into perspective for

The UK will narrowly avoid a formal recession this year. That’s the consensus that is emerging based on the current data. This morning’s Economic Outlook from the OECD – which forecasts 0.3 per cent growth in 2023 – reflects similar projections from the IMF’s latest update and the Office for Budget Responsibility, which have revised their figures upwards in recent months. But to what extent will this modest growth actually be felt by Brits? Here the picture is far less positive. Inflation – which remains stubbornly high, in Britain especially – continues to eat away at real wages. The OECD predicts that the UK will continue to suffer from some

It wasn’t long ago that supermarkets stood accused of selling food too cheaply. Their price wars and two-for-the-price-of-one deals were destroying farmers, undermining local shops and making us fat. How long ago that now seems, with the government now considering 1970s-style price controls. While the measures would apparently be voluntary, they would fix the prices of a number of basic foodstuffs – the sort which Jack Monroe keeps her eyes on. The price of price-fixing is likely to be more pictures of empty shelves, which of course will be blamed on Brexit You don’t need to have studied economics in any depth to understand the problem with price controls. In

The government is delighted with today’s inflation update. Rishi Sunak released a clip this afternoon, talking about his government’s efforts to ‘halve inflation’ by the end of the year. ‘I know it’s still tough’ he says, but ‘the plan is working, and we are delivering.’ The problem is that it is not in his gift to deliver on his particular pledge. The economics in this video rival his chancellor’s coffee cup video from a few months back – in that they simply don’t add up. Politicians do not control inflation. They have no reliable mechanism for doing so. Windfall taxes do not bring down inflation, as he suggests in the video; and

One of the UK’s biggest economic problems is having so many people out of work – and the slowest return to pre-pandemic workforce levels in Europe. This is costly and slows growth, as taxpayers foot the bill for benefits while employers struggle to fill vacancies. Today’s figures show that it is getting better – but slowly.  The official unemployment count crept up to 3.9 per cent in the latest statistics. This is, ironically, a good sign as it shows more people are actually looking for work (about 12 per cent of the working-age population are on out-of-work benefits, although this is a figure that ministers seldom update and never publicise).

The Bank of England has hiked interest rates again, taking the base rate from 4.25 per cent to 4.5 per cent. This is the 12th consecutive rise, voted for 7-2 by the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). It takes rates to their highest level since 2008. The Bank had hoped it could stop raising interest rates months ago. It would require evidence of ‘persistent pressures’ on prices for them to keep hiking the base rate, the MPC said in February. But since then, we’ve had two more rate rises: one in March, which took the base rate from 4 per cent to 4.25 per cent. And another today. So when will

We might have thought Trussonomics was dead and buried for a generation after its author’s short-lived premiership last autumn. But all of a sudden it has a high-profile, if slightly unexpected, convert: Sir Keir Starmer. In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, Starmer was sounding a lot like Kwasi Kwarteng last September: We’ve got the highest tax burden since the second world war. What we’ve had from the government is tax rise upon tax rise on tax rise. If they’ve proved one thing, it’s that their high-tax, low-growth economy doesn’t work. The Labour leader is absolutely correct, even if he is a little late to the

Hollywood will be backing him en masse. The major newspapers will be rooting to put him back in the White House. And most of corporate America, in between filling in the forms for the next round of ‘green subsidies’, will be quietly hoping for another four years of lavish spending and protectionism to keep out all those irritating foreign competitors. As he launched his re-election campaign this week, President Joe Biden could count on plenty of mainstream support. There is just one problem: the Federal Reserve is about to torpedo his campaign – by tipping the American economy into recession.  GDP figures for the US released today showed an economy

It was, admittedly, not quite as thrilling as an action sequence from Call of Duty. Even so, the statement put out by Bobby Kotick, chief executive of US video game publisher Activision, following the UK’s bizarre decision to block the company’s acquisition by Microsoft was about as bloodthirsty as any ever put out by a major corporation. The ruling ‘contradicts the ambitions of the UK to become an attractive country to build a technology business,’ he argued. Even worse, ‘it does a disservice to UK citizens, who face increasingly dire economic prospects’, and, to cap it all off, it shows that Britain is ‘closed for business’. Of course, it would