Once again, the Bank of England missed a trick by not cutting interest rates earlier this week, an error which may well come back to haunt the Old Lady. By getting its timing so wrong, the danger now is that rather than gently bringing down rates over the next few months – as it had…
By HAMISH MCRAE Updated: 10:39 GMT, 22 December 2024 There is, I am afraid, no Christmas cheer this year. We have just had a blisteringly bad few days in both financial and economic terms. The Footsie has lost more than 200 points, making this the worst week for more than a year, but that is…
By ALEX BRUMMER FOR THE DAILY MAIL Updated: 22:12 GMT, 16 December 2024 When is a Budget not a Budget? If this (highly unlikely) were a Christmas cracker teaser then the answer would presumably be: When you call it something else. Rachel Reeves says she will not hold a tax raising Budget in the spring…
By RUTH SUNDERLAND FOR THE DAILY MAIL Updated: 22:07 GMT, 15 December 2024 Just because the price of bitcoin has soared this year and you could still make a profit does not mean you should join the crowd. Crypto, thanks to the endorsement of President-elect Trump, has been brought in from the cold and is…
By ALEX BRUMMER Updated: 09:48 GMT, 14 December 2024 Bank of England watchers are convinced the Monetary Policy Committee will sit on its hands next week when it sets interest rates for the last time this year. If, as governor Andrew Bailey says, the Bank is data-driven, it has little choice but to surprise the…
Before election, Reeves and Starmer went on charm offensive with business They still insist they want to unleash growth Labour needs to ditch the naïve socialist beliefs about economy By RUTH SUNDERLAND FOR THE DAILY MAIL Updated: 21:53 GMT, 8 December 2024 Every minister’s nightmare is to be upstaged in front of the media by…
By HAMISH MCRAE Updated: 21:53 GMT, 7 December 2024 It is madness that bitcoin should break through the $100,000 barrier, as it did briefly on Thursday. But as Polonius observes in Hamlet: ‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.’ The madness is easy to chart. This is an asset that is intrinsically worthless….
By ALEX BRUMMER Updated: 23:30 GMT, 6 December 2024 Finger on the pulse?: Ed Miliband Until now, Ed Miliband largely has been silent on new nuclear. Addressing nuke industry bigwigs this week, the Energy Secretary declared that ‘nuclear offers huge opportunities for our clean energy mission’. All that is splendid. However, the snail’s pace of British…
Few opposition parties receive enough time to prepare for government as Keir Starmer’s Labour. The only surprise about Britain’s July 4 General Election was the timing. When Rachel Reeves outlined Labour’s economic plans in the US in May 2023, with an accompanying policy paper, the central theme was ‘securonomics’. There was a paean of praise for the Biden…
By HAMISH MCRAE Updated: 10:58 GMT, 18 November 2024 The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, wants to get more of us into work. That’s understandable, for the more people in employment, the more people there are paying taxes – and making the Government’s dreadful Budget arithmetic look a little less glum. But how? Up to now, most…
