Moneyblog

Contrary to the impression given by Jason Mitchell, Venezuela does not have a socialist economy (‘Maduro’s madness’, 25 August). It has a ‘mixed’ economy (and therein lies some of its problems; such as food hoarding by private companies hostile to the regime). The private sector is large, and involved in numerous sectors within the economy; food distribution, pharmaceuticals and so on. The US sanctions against Venezuela have always been about regime change, and these sanctions amount to a blockade of the country. US and European banks have refused to handle Venezuelan payments for medical supplies, and pharmaceutical companies have refused to issue export certificates for cancer drugs — therefore stopping

If you’re on the hunt for a mortgage, a fixed rate one will at least ensure that your repayments stay the same. Here are some of the best rates available for five-year fixed rate mortgages on the market at the moment, from data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk.

This piece first appeared as the leading article in The Spectator.  Economies run on confidence — as Franklin D. Roosevelt observed when he told Americans, in his first inaugural address during the depths of the Great Depression in 1933, that they had ‘nothing to fear except fear itself’. If that confidence is lost, if people collectively start drawing in their horns, squirrelling money away because they fear turbulent economic times ahead, then recession can all too easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. No serious economist would dispute this theory. The puzzle is why the UK economy, riddled with Brexit anxieties, is in such good health. The Dutch prime minister said we

Although the interest rates are rarely as good, sometimes you want a savings account that allows you to access your money whenever you like. Here are this week’s Best Buys, of easy access savings accounts – from data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk.

You’ll never get into a good university if you carry on like this.’ A haunting threat from school days past, but since the coalition trebled university tuition fees in 2010, the question is — do you really want to? The decision to increase fees to a maximum of £9,000 a year was met with anger from students and parents alike. Riots broke out with police arresting 153 people at a demo in Trafalgar Square. Widespread fury was particularly directed at Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who had pledged to vote against any increase in fees — so much so that he was forced to broadcast a public apology: ‘We made

If you’ve got a chunk of money that you don’t mind having locked away for a set amount of time, fixed rate bonds can often give a better rate of return than most accounts. Here are this week’s picks of the best two year fixed rate bonds on the market at the moment, from data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk.

Let’s remind ourselves what we mean by ‘disruptor’. A truly disruptive business revolutionises its marketplace by delivering radical improvements in choice, price and accessibility. A disruptor may be a boffin or a bold lateral thinker: Henry Ford did not invent the motorcar any more than Airbnb invented the ‘homestay’, but both created systems that made the product cheaper and more available than ever before — and both count as great disruptors. But these days ‘disruptor’ status is claimed by all manner of ventures. So in choosing our shortlist for the Award sponsored by Julius Baer, we had to sort the original from the derivative and distinguish those that are already

Maybe I should really give it a few more hours, but I can’t help noticing the lack of headlines this morning along the lines “UK economy growing faster than Eurozone”. Goodness knows we had enough headlines drawing attention to the opposite, when that was the case. There was the Guardian’s “Eurozone Grows Twice as Fast as UK after GDP Rises by 0.6 percent” from 1 August last year, the Independent’s “UK economic growth dwarfed again by Eurozone in third quarter” from 31 October last year, and the BBC’s “Eurozone Growing Faster than UK” from 2 May this year. But now that the economic boot is suddenly on the other foot

In case you missed it,  Apple’s market capitalisation has now hit the $1trillion mark – something which is as mind boggling as it was inevitable. Everyone with a newswire, Twitter feed and website seems to have latched onto the milestone. You’d have thought they’d all successfully predicted this event on 1 April 1976, when the company was founded. But the question now is whether the valuation has made a fool of all of us? According to Mike Ingram, Chief Market Strategist at WH Ireland, ‘In just over a decade Apple has transformed itself from a niche tech company for nerds to a global consumer goods powerhouse. While it currently deserves its

Finding a savings account that allows you to collect any interest at all – while still having access to your cash when you want it – can be tricky. There are some options out there, though. Here are the best Easy Access savings accounts on the market at the moment, from data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk.

My anecdote last week about upgrading to BT’s ‘superfast’ broadband provoked several readers, unasked, to tell me their own unsatisfactory experiences. So I thought we should compile a Spectator dossier on the subject — as we did to good effect on the issue of high street bank branch closures, on which your combined report reached the desks of a selection of banking’s top dogs. We did not persuade them to reverse the trend but I know we made them think about how to make it less irritating for customers. In the same spirit, feel free (if your wifi connection is working) to tell me how good or bad the broadband service is

There is a big glaring problem for anyone trying to accuse the government of ‘austerity’ – a charge that is continuously laid by virtually all opposition parties. Just where does that charge fit in with HS2? True, the nation’s roads are full of potholes, the bins in some places are being emptied only once every three weeks and the NHS is trying to wriggle out of offering hernia operations – something it seemed to manage perfectly well to perform in 1948. But still it is a little hard to square the charge of austerity with a government planning to spend £56 billion of public money on a single railway line,