With wealth inequality rising the case for raising revenue via a consumption tax is compellingIs it time for the US to consider switching from income tax to a progressive consumption tax as a way of addressing growing wealth inequality? Many economists have long favoured a consumption-based tax system for raising revenue on the grounds of efficiency and simplicity. However, despite occasional vocal adherents, it has never gained political traction. Is it time to think again?One of the main objections is that switching systems would require a potentially complex transition to avoid penalising existing wealth holders, who would be taxed when they try to spend accumulated savings on which they had already paid income taxes. Yet, in an environment where wealth inequality is rising inexorably, that drawback may be a virtue. Moreover, a great strength of a consumption tax system is that it does not tax saving and also gives firms more incentive to invest.Related: The moral case for a one-off wealth tax is compelling | Kenneth Rogoff Continue reading...

After a decade of savage cuts, the chancellor would need to spend £60bn just to restore services to the level of 2010The end of austerity is here, Sajid Javid tells us. The “page is turned”. If only it really were that easy to erase the damage done during a decade of public services stripped bare. No department will suffer further cuts and all their budgets will keep pace with inflation. It’s good news that “the biggest increase in spending for a decade” means no new punishment will be inflicted on the public realm. An election is on the way and voters won’t take it any more.They need no focus groups to tell them people put the NHS, schools and police top of their priorities. The deep school cuts led to the firing of teachers and teaching assistants; stopped music, drama, art and school trips; closed breakfast clubs for hungry children; and left headteachers begging parents for pencils and glue. The damage emerged into the light of day to Theresa May’s political discomfort in the 2017 election. Now the annual funding is restored, but 10 years of spending are lost for ever.The missing police officers, GPs, nurses, firefighters and all the rest can’t be magicked out of the airRelated: Javid fails to disguise cynical electioneering behind spending review Continue reading...

Chancellor announces £13.8bn of extra expenditure and vows to build a ‘global Britain’

More money for schools, hospitals and police is welcome – but don’t be fooled by promises of the end of austerityThe roots of Wednesday’s extraordinary performance by the chancellor, Sajid Javid, stretch back at least two and a half years. In the 2017 general election, a nurse on Question Time asked Theresa May why her pay hadn’t gone up once in real terms since 2009. The then prime minister’s response? “There isn’t a magic money tree that we can shake that suddenly provides for everything that people want.” One of the most infamous remarks of a car-crash campaign by the Conservatives, it helped teach the party something: it could not win another election by promising further austerity. Scroll forward to autumn 2019 and another prime minister evidently revving up to go to the country. Boris Johnson has learned his lesson: his government needs to be seen to be caring, compassionate, responsive to the country’s problems. It needs to be seen to be spending.Which brings us to Wednesday afternoon and a spending round unlike any other. It took place a year after it was scheduled and only covers one year, rather than the traditional three. Even by the standards of this most nakedly political of major Treasury announcements, Mr Javid acted like he was giving a stump speech. Or at least he tried to, until he was repeatedly pulled up by the Speaker, John Bercow. The result was a messy, rambling performance taking in vignettes from Mr Javid’s childhood, paeans to a “global Britain” and choruses that “we are turning the page on austerity”. Continue reading...

Declaring the end of austerity should have been an easy task but the chancellor blew it

Sajid Javid is delivering his spring statement – here are the main points, with political analysis

Concern over a no-deal Brexit hits growth and damages business confidenceBritain’s dominant service sector failed to grow as quickly as expected in August, as the economy took a step closer to suffering its first recession since the financial crisis.According to a survey from IHS Markit and the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (Cips), which is monitored by the government and the Bank of England for early warning signs from the economy, meagre growth in the service sector failed to offset sharp declines in manufacturing output and construction activity last month. Continue reading...

Australian data shows the economy growing at its slowest rate since 2009, but the treasurer says Australia is ‘resilient’7.40am BSTMarkets are closing all over Asia Pacific so it’s time for me to step down. My colleagues in London will soon be starting a business blog from the northern hemisphere so check in with them to find out how the markets react to the latest Brexit shenanigans and all the potentially very good news about Hong Kong pulling its extradition bill.These were the highlights today:7.26am BSTThe Hong Kong market has jumped 3% after the South China Morning Post reported that the government is withdrawing the controversial China extradition bill that sparked weeks of protest.Hang Seng futures up over 3.5% pic.twitter.com/kRISBUVsbm7.24am BSTBig turnaround for the ASX200 which has closed up 24 points or 0.31% at 6553 points.The Nikkei is done for the day and has finished up 24 points, or 0.12%, at 20,649 points.

Sterling has hit its lowest point since October 2016 flash crash, amid fears of a no-deal Brexit next month

Sales fall 0.1% in July, pointing to weaker GDP numbers. This blog has now closed

Sterling tumbles by almost a cent against the US dollar and falls by about 0.7% on the euroThe pound fell to the lowest level in three weeks amid mounting speculation that a general election is imminent.Boris Johnson said on Monday he did not want to go to the country but the reaction of investors pointed to an expectation that a national poll will be the only way out of the Brexit standoff. Continue reading...

Thinktank says Wednesday’s spending review will amount to boost of £9bn, with £4.5bn already accounted forThe Treasury will need to find an extra £5bn from next year to fund the government’s spending promises, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), which said the increase could undermine the Treasury’s commitment to reduce borrowing.Boris Johnson said on Monday that Wednesday’s Whitehall spending review, which will set out department funding for 2020/21, would be the “most ambitious spending round for more than a decade”.Related: New teachers' salary in England could reach £30,000, says DfE Continue reading...

Survey finds EU-based firms shunning UK manufacturers as risk of no deal mountsUK manufacturers have recorded the sharpest drop in factory output for seven years as mounting concerns over a no-deal Brexit and the slowing global economy hit orders across the country.The monthly snapshot from IHS Markit and the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, which is closely watched by the Treasury for early warning signals from the UK economy, showed that activity fell in August to the lowest levels since July 2012.Related: End to Brexit chaos cannot come too soon for factories | Larry Elliott Continue reading...

Neoliberal economists present themselves as ‘neutral’ technocrats, but they’re actually partisans for the status quo. Don’t fall for it

The US-China trade war is also having an impact on manufacturing worldwideThe shockingly bad snapshot of industry from IHS Markit and the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply puts Britain on recession alert. It doesn’t mean a recession will inevitably materialise.For that to happen, the poor performance of manufacturing would have to be matched by that of the service sector – and, so far at least, it hasn’t been.Related: UK factory output dives to seven-year low as Brexit fears rise Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as British manufacturers suffer falling orders

Life for the postwar baby boomers has been full of opportunity and change. But the fight for freedom and a better world continuesIn 1942, aged 18, my mother was running for her life with her father, mother and siblings, heading for an air-raid shelter as bombs pulverised Portsmouth, turning the city into “a tomb of darkness” as one diarist recorded. During the war the family were to lose their home twice as the city and its docks became a prime target. My mother was wearing a new coat so when her father ordered everyone to hit the ground, she refused. A bomb splinter gouged one side of her back. A female ambulance driver risked her life to drive my mother to hospital through the raid.I was born in 1948. My mother and father lived in a bedsit and saved a few shillings a week for her confinement. And then, like millions who had endured six years of war, they had their just rewards. “The destruction is so awful and the people so wonderful, they deserve a better world,” wrote the future Queen Elizabeth to her grandmother, Mary. On 5 July, the NHS was born. It no longer cost a couple dearly to have a baby. I came along a few weeks later, a citizen of the new “cradle to the grave” welfare state. As historian Asa Briggs said: “War has necessitated welfare.”At 18 I was part of the so-called swinging 60s, miniskirts, women's lib and the counter culture Continue reading...

In an economic downturn Americans will reassess their president’s unreal narrative and random management styleDonald Trump concluded his remarks at the recent G7 summit by inviting the assembled leaders to hold next year’s meeting at his Doral country club near Miami, describing a fantasy-like world of “magnificent buildings” whose “ballrooms are among the biggest in Florida and the best”. It was yet another instance of the US president’s public narrative, which has been on a rising growth path for nearly 50 years.One can observe this by searching Trump’s name in digital news sources such as Google Ngrams. His narrative has been slow to grow by contagion, but it has been growing for a long time, such that his domination of public discourse in the United States almost seems implausible.In your private life, be resolved to do anything and everything, to dice, to drink deep, to live high and keep mistresses, or at all events to boast of it even if you do not do it, telling everyone about it and showing notes that purport to be written by women. You must aim to be elegant, you know, and take pains to create the impression that women are devoted to you. This also will be set down to the credit of your rhetoric by the public, who will infer from it that your fame extends even to the women’s quarters.”Bring with you, then, as the principal thing, ignorance; secondly recklessness, and thereto effrontery and shamelessness. Modesty, respectability, self-restraint, and blushes may be left at home, for they are useless and somewhat of a hindrance to the matter in hand … If you commit a solecism or a barbarism, let shamelessness be your only remedy.” Continue reading...

An end to austerity beckons, but the threat of recession resulting from a no-deal Brexit makes the chancellor’s strategy riskyAs Sajid Javid prepares to deliver his spending round statement this week, Britain is yet again on the brink of another week of Brexit chaos. But in his debut Commons set piece, the chancellor will be looking to make another point to distract from the turmoil to mark a potentially pivotal turning point: the end of austerity.Thanks to the hard work of people in Britain, he will undoubtedly say, the decade of fiscal restraint has now run its course. This is a big moment for the country: public services will get the money they badly need, and Britain will live within its means. Continue reading...

Chinese exports worth $125bn will face new taxes from 1 September, while China places levy on oil as agreement becomes more distantChina and the United States have begun imposing additional tariffs on each other’s goods in the latest escalation of their bruising trade war that has sent shockwaves through the global economy.A new round of tariffs took effect from 0401 GMT on Sunday, with Beijing’s levy of 5% on US crude oil marking the first time the fuel has been targeted since the world’s two largest economies started their trade war more than a year ago.Related: China's yuan hits 11-year low as trade tensions grip marketsRelated: White House insists Trump not having second thoughts on China trade war Continue reading...

As countries turn inwards, ideas such as a cryptocurrency to reduce global dependence on the dollar are being lostUnless Britain leaves the European Union’s single market and customs union, the Brexit party will cry foul. As long as the Brexit party exists, the Tory vote will be forever divided. That is the driving force behind the Conservative party’s policymaking. Even the gift of a peerage is unlikely to deter Nigel Farage from his mission to push the UK out of all the EU’s major institutions, leaving the Tories on a single track to no deal.Given that parliament will not vote for a form of Brexit that would involve a border between the north and south in the island of Ireland, we have come to see that there cannot be a deal.Rather than discuss rational solutions to global problems, the UK is hurtling towards complete separation Continue reading...

This week’s spending review may break Tory fiscal rules – and offer clues to the PM’s election intentionsSajid Javid is preparing to use his first major set-piece as chancellor to confirm large increases in public spending, against a backdrop of spiralling political chaos over Brexit.As the risks to the economy from leaving without a deal mount, the chancellor will take to the dispatch box to make funding announcements for the NHS, schools and the police when he unveils his spending review on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what to expect.The economy has slumped to the brink of recession and public borrowing has risen over recent months Continue reading...

The US central bank spent $29tn to stop the last financial crash. Donald Trump now wants it to bail out his presidencyEarlier this month Donald Trump accused the man he had appointed to run the United States Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, of being an “enemy”. His public dressing down of the central bank chair, who is supposed to be independent, was accompanied by further escalations of the US–China trade war. Mr Trump wants Mr Powell to lower rates to spur growth in the sputtering US economy and give him the upper hand with Beijing. This incompetence and bluster is hardly inspiring global confidence. It was a coincidence, however, that on the same day the Bank of England’s governor, Mark Carney, warned the annual gathering of the world’s central bankers that the global economy was becoming over-reliant on the dollar. That may have been fine when the US was viewed as a responsible leader of the world economy. Mr Carney plainly thinks that is not the case today.There are reasons to worry. Almost every nation is tied to the monetary policy of the US. More than half of all trade invoices are in dollars, as are nine-tenths of all foreign exchange transactions. Since the 2008 global crash, corporate and government levels of dollar debt in the emerging world have rocketed, leading to financial instability. Despite the Trump administration’s volatility and belligerence, the dollar keeps rising in value. It matters not that the US Fed cut rates in July: investors want to put their money into greenbacks. This is no new phenomenon: the US’s “exorbitant privilege” was noted decades ago. Continue reading...

British economy contracted by 0.2% as Brexit uncertainty caused erratic activityThe UK has fallen to the bottom of the G7 growth league table after Brexit uncertainty held the economy back in the spring.Every other advanced economy performed better than Britain in the second quarter of 2019, a ranking confirmed on Friday when Canada was the last of the seven to report GDP figures for the period between April and June. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as Britain posts the weakest GDP figures for the second quarter of 2019

The playbook for taming industrial capitalism already exists. It’s the essential starting point for reform todayIn Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville offered a prescient warning for “the friends of democracy”. In a chapter called “How Aristocracy Could Issue from Industry” he observed that industrial capitalism would create economic inequality between owners and wage-workers and divide them culturally, morally, and socially.Related: Yes, contemporary capitalism can be compatible with liberal democracy | William Arthur Galston Continue reading...

When economic freedoms are taken away, informal markets will always find new and ingenious ways to satisfy demand.

Micro Focus and Hays among companies warning of slower trading as confidence fallsClear signs that Brexit concerns are starting to bite emerged as businesses flagged a freeze on spending and delays in hiring workers as confidence plunges over the prospect of leaving the EU without a deal.Two major UK companies said economic uncertainty was prompting business customers to sit on their cash instead of making investments to support growth and jobs. Continue reading...

Concerns about the state of the nation may start to outweigh the public’s personal feelgood factorBritain’s consumers have largely been deaf to the warnings of impending economic disaster that have rained down thick and fast ever since the EU referendum in June 2016. The public’s appetite to spend has remained strong but one thing it won’t buy is doom and gloom.It would be surprising, though, if consumers were completely impervious to what is happening over Brexit. Surveys have suggested that consumer confidence is getting weaker even though spending in the shops and online has held up well. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as Beijing promises not to hit back straight away over Trump’s latest tariffs

Despite all the talk about recession it might not be time for business owners to start battening down the hatches – thanks to these six indicatorsWith all of the recent talk about recession, is it time now for a business owner to start battening down the hatches, cutting overhead, delaying expansion plans and trimming investments? As in any economy, there are always conflicting signs. But according to these six indicators, my answer is: no?Related: Five things Congress may do that will affect your business this year Continue reading...

An apparent move by big business to maximise stakeholder value sounds too good to be trueFor four decades, the prevailing doctrine in the US has been that corporations should maximise shareholder value – meaning profits and share prices – here and now, come what may, regardless of the consequences to workers, customers, suppliers and communities. So the statement endorsing stakeholder capitalism, signed earlier this month by virtually all the members of the US Business Roundtable, has caused quite a stir. After all, these are the CEOs of the US’s most powerful corporations, telling Americans and the world that business is about more than the bottom line. That is quite an about-face. Or is it?The free-market ideologue and Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman was influential not only in spreading the doctrine of shareholder primacy, but also in getting it written into US legislation. He went so far as to say: “There is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.”Related: Why central bankers' conventional tools are no longer working Continue reading...

Thinktank says Australia won’t be able to avoid economic disruption if Chinese economy is forced into hard landingAustralia’s federal government must focus on building new free trade agreements and give up the dream of a budget surplus if the country is to withstand the impact of a hard landing by the Chinese economy, according to a new report.The risks to China’s economy are growing – among them the US-China trade war, colossal corporate and household debts, and the mounting political crisis in Hong Kong – placing the leadership in Beijing under increasing pressure to sustain the growth that has propelled it to superpower status in the past three decades.Related: China's yuan hits 11-year low as trade tensions grip marketsRelated: Hong Kong businesses fear protests will push economy into recession Continue reading...

Representatives from 34 women’s organisations call on the new prime minister to use the spending review to demonstrate that he is serious about ending austerityWomen’s organisations welcomed the chancellor’s promise this year that “austerity is coming to an end”. The 2019 spending review is a significant test of what that promise will mean in real terms, particularly for women, who have borne the brunt of austerity policies since 2010. But an end to austerity must mean more than simply an end to budget cuts. After nearly a decade of chronic underfunding, our public services are in crisis. For “just about managing” families, continuing as they are for the next few years certainly won’t feel much like the end of austerity.Women – particularly the poorest women, BAME women and disabled women – suffered most from cuts to public services and social security because they are generally poorer, more likely to use public services, more likely to work in the public sector and more likely to increase unpaid work when services are cut. Women and those on lower incomes need to see a marked improvement in public services and a rise in living standards more generally, if the promise of end to austerity is going to ring true. Our public services and social security system need meaningful investment to actively reverse and repair the damage done since 2010. Spending on social infrastructure, such as health, education, care and specialist women’s services builds the social and human capital that is just as important to future productivity as investment in say, transportation networks. After all, it is not just roads but high-quality childcare and reliable healthcare that enable parents to work. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as fears of a no-deal Brexit hit the pound

Business leaders voice alarm over economic impact, as sterling falls to six-day lowThe pound has fallen sharply after Boris Johnson announced plans to suspend parliament for five weeks before the Brexit deadline, raising the chances of a no-deal exit from the EU.Sterling was under sustained selling pressure on Wednesday morning, falling by more than a cent against the US dollar to trade below $1.22, and by almost as much against the euro, to €1.0964.Actively pursuing a no-deal Brexit … is tantamount to actively pursuing a recession Continue reading...

Britain will be hunting for trade deals at the worst possible time, says ex-Bank economist

Competition to sell mortgages is strong, but vendors are in no mood to cut and runThese are tough times to be an estate agent. A period of rocketing prices in the middle of the decade has made residential property expensive. Buyers are unable or unwilling to pay the prices demanded by sellers and with unemployment low sellers feel in no need to adjust their expectations downwards.The result is a flat market with next to no house price inflation. Or so it seemed before the release of the latest UK Finance figures for mortgage lending, which showed approvals at a 28-month high. Boom times are back for the housing market. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

In the final part of a series on the prospects for a downturn, the Guardian speaks to a construction firm owner in south London

The fund’s loan agreement with Ecuador will worsen unemployment and povertyWhen people think of the damage that wealthy countries – typically led by the US and its allies – cause to people in the rest of the world, they probably think of warfare. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died from the 2003 invasion, and then many more as the region became inflamed.Related: Brexit: EU ‘would block trade deal if Britain reneged on bill’Related: White House insists Trump not having second thoughts on China trade warMark Weisbrot is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington and the president of Just Foreign Policy. He is also the author of Failed: What the ‘Experts’ Got Wrong About the Global Economy Continue reading...

Trump expressed his optimism about China hours after he sent mixed messages on the tariff warDonald Trump, facing pressure to scale back a US-China trade war contributing to a global economic slowdown, claimed Monday that serious talks will begin soon.Trump said his trade negotiators had received two “very good calls” from China on Sunday. But a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said on Monday that he didn’t know what calls Trump was talking about. Continue reading...

When I was growing up, Gigg Lane glowed with local charm. Now the club’s plight may be prophetic for a neglected regionThe threatened expulsion of small town Bury from the English Football League – which could happen if the owner, Steve Dale, does not conclude a sale of the club by 5pm on Tuesday – has been a touch more emotional for me than many of the football traumas I have investigated as a journalist over the past 20 years. I grew up in north Manchester, five miles down the road, and went to school in Bury. Twice a day I used to pass the club’s Gigg Lane ground and wonder at it from the top of the 35 bus: a proper football home, bedded in with all its history behind a pleasing line of trees.In these crisis-stricken months for Bury, a club founded in 1885, many people have rightly pointed with bewilderment to English football’s violent inequalities; to Manchester City and United 10 miles away, owned by overseas billionaires, making multimillionaires of their players and managers. Supporters have despaired at the gaping holes in football’s governance, its painfully limited “fit and proper persons test” for owners, so long campaigned for but that still fails to protect beloved clubs from needless ruination.Since the coalition government formed in 2010, Bury council has suffered cuts of £85m, 61% of its annual budgetRelated: Bury’s fate is a parable for the state of modern football | Anthony Clavane Continue reading...

Investors seek safe havens such as US treasuries and gold as US-China standoff continuesThe yuan has fallen to its lowest level in 11 years as the US-China trade war continued to grip markets.The Chinese currency sunk below to 7.1500 a dollar, the lowest rate since February 2008, on Monday after Washington and Beijing confirmed further tit-for-tat tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of imports.Related: Is a global recession coming? Here are seven warning signsRelated: Here are the reasons for Trump's economic war with China Continue reading...

Tweaking inflation targets is not an adequate response to the challenges facing major economiesThe world’s central bankers and the scholars who follow them are having their annual moment of reflection in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. But the theme of this year’s meeting, “challenges for monetary policy”, may encourage an insular – and dangerous – complacency.Simply put, tweaking inflation targets, communications strategies, or even balance sheets is not an adequate response to the challenges now confronting the major economies. Rather, 10 years of below-target inflation throughout the developed world, with 30 more expected by the market, and the utter failure of the Bank of Japan’s extensive efforts to raise inflation suggest that what was previously treated as axiomatic is in fact false: central banks cannot always set inflation rates through monetary policy. Continue reading...

Donald Trump has admitted he may rethink his deepening trade war with China after criticism from fellow world leaders at the G7 summit in Biarritz. Asked at a working breakfast with Boris Johnson if he had had second thoughts about the standoff, the president replied: 'Yeah, sure. Why not? … I have second thoughts about everything'

In the first part of a series assessing warning signs of economic downturn, the Guardian visits a hotel in Scotland

The US-China trade war, jitters in Germany and Brexit uncertainty point to a slump

The G7 thought it had solved Africa’s problems, but rising child poverty is a ticking time bombTime was when Africa dominated gatherings of the G7. In the period between two summits held in the UK – Birmingham in 1998 and Gleneagles in 2005 – the talk was of little else. There was public activism and it led to political action.In part, that was because the big developed countries were enjoying a spell of low-inflationary growth and could look beyond their own problems to see a bigger picture. There was the occasional financial panic, but the G7 thought the problems of economic management had largely been solved and all that was needed was a bit of tinkering by technocratic central bankers.Related: The Observer view on Syria and the west’s shameful failure to act | Observer editorialRelated: 'I fear for the children': the families battling to beat the odds in Kibera – photo essay Continue reading...