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Coffee shops comment harks back to Napoleon Mar 11 2009

Napoleon once supposedly said England was “une nation de boutiquiers” – a nation of shopkeepers. Considering old Boney’s attitude to the victors of Waterloo, Torres Vedras and Trafalgar, I suppose we ought to be glad he didn’t call us anything nastier.Read

Overhaul of banking regulatory sytem overdue Mar 10 2009

Shadow chancellor George Osborne yesterday took delivery of what in a sane world would be an effective addition to the Conservative’s election artillery.Read

£13m plan unlikely to lift the recession blues Mar 09 2009

What are we to make of the news that the Government is spending £13 million to alleviate depression and anxiety among victims of recession?Read

UK car industry stranded on hard shoulder Mar 06 2009

An intriguing anomaly in the UK car industry was highlighted yesterday by Eric Wallbank, Ernst & Young’s top expert on the industry.Read

Quantitative easing: Prepare for a flood of cash Mar 05 2009

Here’s a question for the sages of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee: if, as we are asked to believe, quantitative easing – let’s call it QE, if only to cut down on the economic gobbledegook – is the silver bullet that will get the bombed out robber banks lending again and kill the recession, why hasn’t it been fired earlier?Read

Crash is a trip down memory lane Mar 04 2009

As the stock market sinks back to where it was in 2003 at the nadir of the dot.com disaster, hammered by a relentless flow of appalling news, people beyond a certain age may be forgiven for taking a trip down memory lane.Read

HSBC chief's remorse sadly lacking amongst his peers Mar 03 2009

It’s a funny world when private sector banks are doing so badly they can be saved only by being nationalised while the publicly-owned Post Office is in such a woeful state it can be saved only by being privatised.Read

Pensions don’t indicate success Mar 02 2009

The concenpt of performance related pay has been brought into sharp focus in recent months. As the world’s leading financial institutions have queued up to announce one set of disasterous results after another, so the world has looked on aghast as those at their helms have trousered pay packets way beyond the wildest dreams of mere mortals.Read

Found: a happy car salesman Feb 25 2009

Far-fetched as it may seem, I found myself discussing the time of day on Monday with a member a supposedly extinct species, a positively cheerful car salesman.Read

Why do they do it? As this recession rumbles on, with corporate casualties mounting on a daily basis, the announcements of plant closures and job losses are worth a study in themselves. Feb 23 2009

The best example of thinly-disguised corporate mixed messages emanated from GKN this week.Read

Darling hoping for a lucky break with his Budget Feb 20 2009

Now we know why Chancellor Darling has opted to deliver his Budget on April 22, waiting longer into the spring than any previous Chancellor that I can recall.Read

Inflation can be a good thing Feb 18 2009

Here we are, mired in this recession, and inflation, which the Bank of England has had to give up fighting, refuses to wither away as advertised. Read

Banks are just out of this world Feb 17 2009

Cosmologist Paul Davies says it is “entirely reasonable” to suppose that aliens are colonising Earth and that we are sharing the planet with a form of life of which we know nothing.Read

Finger of blame is still pointing at the banks Feb 16 2009

When things start to go bad, it’s human nature to want to look for someone to blame.Read

Sorry seems to be the hardest word for King Feb 12 2009

The Bank of England’s Mervyn King is no follower of fashion. He refused point-blank yesterday to apologise, even pretend to apologise, for getting us into the present fix by not cutting interest rates last summer.Read

Bigger worries than oil prices Feb 11 2009

Petrol prices are creeping up again. At a pump I pass most days I noticed that a queue builds up most mornings and vanishes in the afternoon.Read

Bankers won’t go without their bonuses Feb 10 2009

We might as well face it, we are not going back to the dear, dead days when bankers, like everybody else, were paid a salary to do a job and got on with it.Read

Bankers won't go without their bonuses Feb 10 2009

We might as well face it, we are not going back to the dear, dead days when bankers, like everybody else, were paid a salary to do a job and got on with it.Read

Banks just not living in the real world Feb 09 2009

We seem to be living in something of a parallel universe; the real world and the banking sector.Read

Bank is pulling out all stops Feb 06 2009

One of the few certainties we have left is that the Bank of England’s quarterly “Inflation Report” next Wednesday will not contain the word “panic”. Central bankers don’t use words like “panic”. If they did everybody else would panic and central banks exist to see that they don’tRead

Does Gordon Brown dare follow Obama's lead on salary cap? Feb 05 2009

Now what is Gordon going to make of President Obama’s cap on top people’s pay?Read

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