Money

One of the major exchanges has gone spectacularly bust. Billions of investor’s money has been lost. There have been allegations of widespread fraud, and one of the biggest corporate trials in modern history is set to dominate the business pages over the rest of the year. The collapse of the FTX, and the arrest of its high-profile founder Sam Bankman-Fried, was meant to finish off bitcoin and the rest of the cryptocurrencies. And yet, this year digital money is staging a dramatic revival – and making fools of its critics all over again.  When FTX went down, there was no shortage of people telling us, with ill-disguised glee, that bitcoin

It was only a few weeks ago that Liz Truss started commenting on domestic policy again, speaking to The Spectator not just about what happened during her time in No. 10, but about what she sees as prescriptions for Britain’s stagnant economy. Today she weighs back in on foreign policy. In Tokyo this morning, the former prime minister made her first international speech since leaving office and it combined her favourite topics: economic freedom and taking a tough stance on China. Truss is calling for world leaders to band together and create an ‘economic Nato’ – which would include agreeing to a tough package of economic sanctions on China, were

Inflation remains at near a 40-year high – but finally, we’re starting to see some signs of good news. This morning’s update from the Office for National Statistics shows CPI falling to 10.1 per cent in the 12 months to January 2023, down from 10.5 per cent in December 2022.  It’s a better update compared to January, which revealed a much smaller dip in CPI between November and December last year. Core inflation – which excludes energy and food – fell too, from 6.3 per cent on the year in December down to 5.8 per cent in January. Crucially, this easing beat the consensus, both for CPI (the expectation was

The latest labour market update – published by the Office for National Statistics this morning – looks a lot like last month’s update: that’s to say, a mixed bag of news. Unemployment rose again, up 0.1 per cent between October to December, to 3.7 per cent. But this quarterly rise was once again off-set by a fall in economic inactivity: down 0.3 percentage points, largely thanks to young workers entering (or re-entering) the workforce.  Overall, it’s a trade-off worth making: the official unemployment figure has failed for some time to reflect the true number of people out of work, as over two million people of working age are thought to be

We’re all familiar with the usual trade union cliches: it’s not about us, it’s about passenger safety; staff morale is low; and strikers are being ‘victimised’. Or, in the words of Aslef general secretary Mick Whelan on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, train drivers are being ‘demonised’. More so than government ministers, who are forever portrayed by union leaders as callous evil-doers?     But it is what Whelan said next that really catches the ear. Asked whether he thought the public should be sympathetic towards train drivers on £60,000 a year turning down an offer which would take their pay to £65,000 a year, he said: ‘It isn’t about what we earn, it

It is ‘obscene’ and ‘an insult to working families’, according to the TUC. If there was one thing more predictable than the doubling of profits of the energy giant Shell – given that the stuff it sells has soared in price over the last year – it was the storm of protest that it ran into following the announcement today. ‘No company should be making these kind of outrageous profits out of Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine,’ said the Lib Dem leader Ed Davey. Inevitably, there are now calls for higher windfall taxes, and even for state-ownership. But hold on? Shouldn’t we celebrate a major British company making lots of

It will be a charter for fraudsters. It will usher in an open-season mindset for money launderers and criminals. And it will drag down the reputation of the City. There will be plenty of critics of today’s government decision to push forward with a regulated cryptocurrency market in London. In the wake of the FTX scandal, one of the largest in corporate history, many would rather see it banned completely. But crypto is more resilient than that – and the UK, if moves quickly, it can carve out a lucrative space as its leading hub.  No one could accuse Rishi Sunak or Jeremy Hunt of taking any risks with the

Just what is a UK government supposed to do to keep the IMF happy? This morning it has issued a bulletin predicting that the UK will be the only major economy to shrink in 2023 – by 0.6 per cent – and blaming it on ‘tighter fiscal and monetary policies’. This represents an even-bleaker outlook than the IMF foresaw in October, when it pencilled in growth of just 0.3 per cent. Yet this is the same IMF which last September condemned Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget for slashing taxes, saying 'given elevated inflation pressure in many countries, including the UK, we do not recommend large and untargeted fiscal packages at this juncture, as

As the UK – and indeed the world – faces the prospect of an economic downturn this year, what exactly can the government do about it? This remains an ongoing debate within the Tory party, as Rishi Sunak continues to emphasise the importance of stability, while Liz Truss’s most loyal supporters keep pressuring the government to revive her focus on economic growth.  This morning a trio of cabinet members showed up in the City to suggest that it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan, Business Secretary Grant Shapps and the main act, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, opened this morning’s conference at Bloomberg by insisting the

Every month, we are bombarded with the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), the main inflation measure. It is currently running at 10.5 per cent, and although this is slightly down over the past two months, it is still far, far above the Bank of England’s target of two per cent. But what about inflation for people who are running businesses? The Office for National Statistics (ONS) also publishes a Producer Price Index (PPI) covering inflation for commercial organisations. If you think living costs for consumers are high, count yourself lucky you are not running a factory: the PPI of input prices (i.e. prices of raw materials and other goods) for December has come

Rishi Sunak ruffled his own party’s feathers last week when – in reference to last autumn’s market turmoil – he told an audience in Lancashire: ‘You’re not idiots, you know what’s happened.’ This was quickly interpreted as the Prime Minister branding the MPs and business leaders calling for immediate tax cuts as ‘idiots’, sparking not only backlash but also another round of debates on a topic that has been dividing the Tory party since last summer. Just how quickly and aggressively can the party start to cut the tax burden down from its 72-year high? Today’s public sector finance update for the month of December certainly doesn’t settle this debate,

I have to tip my hat to Civitas. The ‘Tufton Street’ think tank made quite a splash on Monday, including bagging the front page of the Daily Mail, with two striking claims. One was that more than half of UK households now receive more in benefits from the government than they pay in tax. The other is that the top 10 per cent of earners pay more than half of all income tax. Both headlines are correct, but a bit more analysis is needed to interpret these figures properly. For a start, this is not new information. The Civitas report acknowledges that it is simply repackaging data which was first published by the Office

When Rishi Sunak laid out his five pledges at the start of the year, his first and most prominent one was to halve inflation in 2023. A few weeks on: how’s that going?    This morning’s inflation figures would suggest not so well. Inflation fell in the 12 months leading up to December 2022 to 10.5 per cent, down from 10.7 per cent in November. So prices are moving in the right direction, but at a snail’s pace. Ross Clark has the details here, where he highlights how the rising cost of food and domestic services is cancelling out falling energy prices. Inflation is still projected to fall significantly by the time

Economic optimism is in short supply these days – but has pessimism about the UK’s economy been overegged by the likes of Sadiq Khan? The verdict of chief executives from around the world suggests as much: Britain has been ranked in the top three markets for investment, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’s (PwC’s) annual Global CEO Survey. Today’s report follows the latest growth update that revealed that the economy did not contract in November as had been widely predicted, but grew slightly by 0.1 per cent. It marks a sharp contrast from the recent warnings of the London mayor, who said that ‘Brexit isn’t working’. The survey, timed to be published as the business

The political and financial elite are gathered in Davos in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual meeting, which starts today. Yet before the conference has even kicked off, the narrative around it has already been crafted: the WEF will have to pivot away from the free-market and globalist outlook Davos usually promotes, and switch its focus to inequality instead. In a cost-of-living crisis, images of the glamorous Swiss resort and delegates quaffing champagne are not a good look.  This problem was pre-empted by many. Neither Rishi Sunak nor his chancellor Jeremy Hunt will be attending this year’s conference (trade secretary Kemi Badenoch and business secretary Grant Shapps will

Whatever happened to the economic boom that was supposed to follow the Covid pandemic? The 2020s, some argued, would be like the 1920s, with an economy roaring its way out of recession, to be remembered as a time of unprecedented wealth and opportunity. That is not how things have turned out so far.  While economic growth in the UK during 2022 is still likely to come out positive, the growth was concentrated in the first half of the year – in the third quarter GDP fell by 0.3 per cent. The economy, according to the Office of National Statistics, is now 0.8 per cent smaller than it was on the eve of