A nation’s cash value is still a go-to measure of wealth. But the quality of housing, healthcare and access to technology are the indicators we should focus onThe idea that GDP growth is the wrong measure of a nation’s progress has become so widely accepted as to be the new common sense. Yet it is still the go-to number for lack of a credible alternative. Measuring happiness or wellbeing is fraught for numerous reasons, not least of which is that such indices make questionable assumptions about what it means to live a good life.Related: Slow economic growth is not the new normal, it's the old norm | Larry ElliottRelated: The future: where borrowing is the norm and ownership is luxury Continue reading...

Tension is more likely to spark a US trade war with Beijing than a shootout with Pyongyang. China’s debt bubble will burst, with major consequencesFull marks for timing, Mr President. Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, making it an appropriate moment for Donald Trump to threaten North Korea with obliteration.One of the few achievements Trump can point to in his first six months in office is that shares on Wall Street have been steadily rising since his election victory last October. The “fire and fury” remark and the inevitable counter blast from Kim Jong-un gave the markets pause for thought. But not much more than that.

We are fond of remembering our role as wartime liberators. But now it is we who need help, in the form of an offer to protect us from our folly‘A visitor from Mars would assume that the UK is under attack from a hostile power seeking to destroy our economy and many of our national institutions … But there is no hostile foreign power. The threatened damage is entirely self-inflicted.”This forceful reflection on the state of the nation comes from Sir Brian Unwin, former president of the European Investment Bank, one of the many EU institutions from whose work the British economy has benefited through our membership. Continue reading...

Authoritarian China is now an economic blueprint for Zuma and MaduroTen years ago this week, it became clear that the dread event – a run on one bank that will create a malevolent impact on others – was under way. A US investment bank had a few weeks earlier summarily closed some of its property-based hedge funds to stop a cascade of sellers; now a French bank was doing the same, as a panic about overblown property values infected confidence.The financial crisis of 2007/8 was the beginning of a chain of events that would ultimately threaten the viability of the west’s banking system – the landmark economic moment of this century, the consequences of which are still playing themselves out. Continue reading...

The whole economy moves when the property market moves. This is hardly a desirable state of affairs, but we are not in for a re-run of the 1990s slumpHouse price crashes are rare in Britain and it’s not hard to see why. This is a small country with tough planning laws and a tax system that creates incentives for people to invest in bricks and mortar. Mostly, limits on supply plus strong demand equals rising prices.There is little to suggest that the property market is about to go though the agonies of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when prices fell in real terms for more than half a decade and record numbers of homes were repossessed. Continue reading...

Investment bank Morgan Stanley predicts pound-euro parity by early next yearBritish holidaymakers should brace themselves for more Brexit pain when they change their pounds into euros, with a leading investment bank forecasting the currencies are on the way to parity.Sterling is trading at €1.09 after collapsing from €1.31 on the day before the UK voted to quit the European Union in June 2016.Related: Pound plunges amid fears over Brexit delaysRelated: UK households cut back as Brexit effect on pound hits living costs Continue reading...

A proposed new anti-Brexit movement would attract neoliberals in thrall to flawed free market economics. In short, half the Conservative partyOne Thursday night in the next couple of years we could go to sleep knowing that, by Friday morning, neoliberalism in Britain will be over. If a left-led Labour party comes to power, leading a coalition determined to scrap free market economics, that will be a good day for working people. It will be a bad day for Virgin Care, Portland Communications and Saudi Arabia.Related: Utopian thinking: the eclipse of neoliberalism heralds a new dawn of sharing | Minna SalamiRelated: Brexit will be catastrophic. Yet I still support Jeremy Corbyn | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett Continue reading...

The wage gap is more than simply one very memorable statistic – it’s a measure of inequality that shrinks and expands according to age, industry and raceA Google employee’s tirade against diversity efforts included a claim that the gender wage gap is a myth, in spite of mountains of data proving otherwise.But the wage gap is more than simply one very memorable statistic – that a woman in the US earns $0.80 for each $1 a man earns. It is a measure of inequality that shrinks and expands based on variables including age, geography, industry, occupation and race.

At the EU he was a lone voice against hyper-globalisation and its rust-belt economics. The era of Brexit and Trump needs his internationalist spirit

Nearly half of £6.1bn energy spending in developing countries from 2010-14 went on oil, coal and gas-fired schemes, data showsThe UK has spent more than twice as much overseas support on fossil fuels projects as on renewable ones so far this decade, according to research commissioned by the Catholic aid agency Cafod.The Overseas Development Institute, which analysed the figures, found that 46% of Britain’s £6.1bn energy spending in developing countries between 2010 and 2014 went on oil, coal and gas-fired schemes, compared with 22% for renewable energy projects.Related: Fossil fuel subsidies are a staggering $5 tn per year | John Abraham Continue reading...

One in three men from disadvantaged backgrounds are single at age of 42, compared with one in seven from rich familiesMiddle-aged men from disadvantaged backgrounds are twice as likely to be single as those from rich families, according to a new study that highlights the lack of social mobility in Britain.Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that men’s marriage prospects are linked to their upbringing, and that the disparity between those from well-off and poor families has widened in recent years. Continue reading...

David Murray on debunking economic myths; Les Bright on politicians with no answers; Ed Runham on Labour being unfairly blamed; Alan Cleaver on banks having learned nothing; and Frank Field MP on a programme to boost wagesAs Torsten Bell notes, those in Whitehall failed to see the crash coming (We let the financial crisis go to waste, 9 August), but a significant number of non-neoclassical economists did – it’s just that they weren’t listened to. It’s possible that Bell is also steeped in neoclassical economic beliefs, but in the hope that his good work at the Resolution Foundation might have loosened those chains, he could do enormous further service by speaking up to debunk a few economic myths.When he writes “there is not some magic bullet”, it resonates with the now discredited “myth” that “there is no magic money tree”, employed by Thatcher, Cameron and May. After all, from his time in the department he must surely have been aware that in 2013, tucked away in the bundle of Treasury documents tabled by the then chancellor, George Osborne, on budget day, was one with this paragraph: “For example, it is theoretically possible for monetary authorities to finance fiscal deficits through the creation of money. In theory, this could allow governments to increase spending or reduce taxation without raising corresponding financing from the private sector. Adair Turner, Chairman of the Financial Services Authority, has suggested this could be a tool to use in extreme circumstances.” Clearly such money could be used to increase spending to build houses and improve the lot of workers, both of which Bell recommends.

All the day’s economic and financial news, including new UK industrial production and trade figures

Brexit negotiators urged to safeguard terms of trade with EU amid signs UK becoming more dependent on deals with blocBritain’s trade position with the rest of the world worsened in June as the sharp fall in the value of the pound since the Brexit vote failed to lift sales of UK-made goods abroad.The trade in goods deficit widened unexpectedly to £12.7bn, from £11.3bn in May, as exports fell by 2.8% but imports rose by 1.6% according to the Office for National Statistics. It was the biggest deficit in nine months and much wider than economists’ forecasts of £11bn.Related: Business Today: sign up for a morning shot of financial news Continue reading...

Businesswoman and former chief executive of the Economist who became the first female president of the Confederation of British IndustryIt was not only being a woman that made Helen Alexander different from her predecessors when she was appointed president of the CBI, the British employers’ organisation, for two years from 2009. She was also relatively young for the role, and hers was a calm, even self-effacing, personality – a quality not always associated with CBI presidents. And, unlike the others, she was not a big company person, having made her name as chief executive of the Economist, the weekly magazine-format newspaper, during its period of rapid global expansion between 1997 and 2008.All this helped to make Helen, who has died aged 60 of cancer, the ideal CBI leader at a time when the economy was in deep trouble and trust in business was rapidly collapsing. She was a good listener, and a great networker, and she was unflappable even though there was plenty to flap about. There was not an ounce of pomposity in her, she carried no political baggage, and by no stretch of the imagination could she be dismissed as a fat cat. Continue reading...

The only surprise is that the experts’ predicted economic consequences of Brexit took so long to materialiseThe Brexit debate is an endless source of mirth for anyone with a dark sense of humour. My favourite quote is from Michael Gove, Britain’s environment secretary.Just before the EU referendum in June last year, Gove, then justice secretary in David Cameron’s government, dismissed the all-but-unanimous view of economists and others that a decision to leave the EU would deeply damage the British economy. “People in this country have had enough of experts,” Gove testily explained, referring to “experts from organisations with acronyms, saying they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong”.Related: Business Today: sign up for a morning shot of financial newsRelated: You’re wrong Michael Gove – experts are trusted far more than you | Anand Menon and Jonathan Portes Continue reading...

The architects of austerity do not suffer the consequences of their cruel policies. They leave that to the poorest in the UK, and their babies and childrenThe starkest sign that the way society’s being run has gone wrong isn’t simply the harm that’s being endured – say, mass child hunger – but the fact that those watching no longer care. For some reason that thought came into my mind this week, as it emerged David Cameron has a “Calm down, dear – it’s only a recession” poster in his £1.5m second home.“I can’t even afford food or a cot bed for her.” “I worry about making payments, bills …” “We’re only able to feed our children, not ourselves.”Related: I know what it’s like to spend school holidays hungry. So do today’s kids | Dawn FosterRelated: The end of child poverty? Not with the Tories in power | Polly Toynbee Continue reading...

England’s northerners are dying younger at far higher rates than their southern counterparts. This is a result of an unequal society with a withered state unable to level life’s playing fieldHas England’s north-south divide turned into a deadly one? If the latest research on premature deaths is to be believed, it certainly seems so. Researchers from Manchester University looked at the death rates of two groups of 25 million people either side of a line from the Wash to the Severn estuary. Above the line “northerners” between the ages of 25 to 44 died in much greater numbers than “southerners” below it. The figures are staggering: in the age group 25-34 years nearly a third more northerners died. For those aged between 35 and 44 the mortality rate was 50% higher among northerners. This gap is a modern phenomenon: in 1995 regional mortality converged to within a whisker.The reasons for the differing rates of death are not, perhaps, as surprising as the causes. Young people die from “diseases of despair” – those associated with drug overdoses, suicides and alcoholism. These blight regions unequally: the north-east had the highest drugs-related mortality rate, 77 per 1 million people. In London the comparable figure is just 32. While the north represents 30% of the population of England, it includes 50% of the poorest neighbourhoods – and a rapid increase in suicides from 2008, concentrated in areas of high unemployment, contributes to higher premature death rates. Continue reading...

Readers respond to George Monbiot’s recent article and news that the US Department of Agriculture is censoring use of term ‘climate change’George Monbiot’s call to reconsider how we name things (Forget ‘the environment’. Fight for our living planet, 9 August) is a timely contribution to a confusing world. But one word that both he and the majority of online contributors have ignored is “prosperity”. That, after all, is why humans engage in economic activity: they believe it will make things better. There is, however, a fundamental problem with the way we have arranged our economic affairs. By treating the natural world as an infinite thing, “external” to the economy (except as a never-ending supply of resources) we have built a massive endeavour to take natural resources and make them into things that are then disposed of, generally after a fairly brief period of human enjoyment.Everyone I speak to readily accepts that under this system the planet must eventually “run out”, but they cannot see an alternative to “prosperity”. The conversation we need to have is not how we name things but how we do things. Continue reading...

Threadneedle Street believes lowest unemployment level since mid-1970s will give workers more bargaining powerLong-awaited signs of pay growth have been detected by the Bank of England amid evidence that a steady fall in unemployment is making it harder to find staff.With the jobless rate at its lowest level since the mid-1970s, the regular report compiled by Threadneedle Street’s regional agents found a slight edging up of pay awards. Continue reading...

Gold rises to highest level in almost two months, while Swiss franc increases by more than 1% against US dollarGrowing tension between the US and North Korea boosted the Swiss franc, the Japanese yen, gold and government bonds as investors sought out traditional safe havens at a time of geopolitical uncertainty.Nervous trading marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the financial crisis on Wednesday, after Donald Trump’s warning that North Korea faced “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if it continued to make threats against the US. Continue reading...

UK’s largest payment processing company agrees to a takeover deal and primary listing on the New York Stock Exchange

Pilot scheme at HMP Birmingham prepares prisoners for jobs and urges employers to see the potential of untapped workforceIn a brightly lit loft above the chapel of HMP Birmingham, singer Julianne Bastock is asking local business people to miaow up and down a musical scale.There are nervous smiles among the smartly dressed men and women who have come to see for themselves how a scheme to run choirs in prisons can help tackle reoffending rates and connect former prisoners with employers. Continue reading...

Ex-chancellor says scariest moment of financial crisis was when he took call from RBS and asked how long bank could lastAlistair Darling has revealed his “most scary moment” of the financial crisis, which began a decade ago.The former Labour chancellor of the exchequer said he received a shocking phone call from Royal Bank of Scotland in 2008, revealing a run on the bank.Related: What the 21st century can learn from the 1929 crash | Larry Elliott Continue reading...

Sam Woods has spelled out clearly why a transition period is needed for financial services – and showed it would make the process cheaperSam Woods isn’t beating about the bush. The deputy governor of the Bank of England and head of the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) says practical complexities arising from Brexit pose “a material risk to our objectives” and “we may have to make some difficult prioritisation decisions”.This is strong stuff. Central bankers tends to prefer qualification and nuance. Woods couldn’t be clearer in describing why a transition period is needed to make the Brexit process orderly, at least in financial services.Related: Bank of England warns Brexit will put strain on regulatory resourcesRelated: Nicky Morgan requests assessment of City's readiness for hard Brexit Continue reading...

Attlee and Roosevelt built a fairer world off the back of economic catastrophe. We’ve failed at that todayIt’s not the time passing, it’s the opportunity for retrospection that kills you. Or at least that’s how it feels looking back a full 10 years to the day when I was working in the Treasury as we got the news that the French bank BNP Paribas had frozen funds exposed to US sub-prime mortgages. The crunch part of the “credit crunch” had arrived, and with it a chain of historic events that led to the first bank run in Britain in over 100 years and the collapse of Lehman Brothers just over a year later. Looking back over that decade is not pretty, and should leave us asking: is this really the best we can do?Related: Credit crunch, 10 years on: fate of RBS shows global crisis is not overFor all the talk of ever increasing income inequality, it has been broadly flat in recent yearsRelated: A decade after the financial meltdown, its underlying problems haven’t been fixed Continue reading...

Guardian readers respond to cuts to mental health and youth services, maternity ward closures, and benefits changes“Childhood” in “Crisis”, edited by Phil Scraton (Letters, 7 August) and published in 1996, has long been considered the definitive reference book on child poverty and the demonisation of young people by academics and youth and community practitioners alike. However, when first released it could not have been predicted that those warnings about austerity measures and social exclusion would prove prescient in terms of young people’s current status in the UK, including their mental health issues and harm-related behaviours (Bed found for suicidal girl after judge’s fury, 5 August).As a former youth service manager, school governor and manager of a community-based social inclusion project, I have directly observed the impact of those draconian cuts over the past few years, and the decimation of most youth services and young people’s drop-in support provision can be directly linked to the provision of funding for Cameron’s flagship National Citizen Service, leaving thousands of vulnerable young people without year-round support. This government’s drive to privatise public services has enabled profit-driven providers to get rich at the expense of young people in deprived communities. Who could have predicted that, by 2016, so many young people would be dependent on food banks and without hope for their own futures? Continue reading...

Every poll in Nicaragua has shown that the interoceanic canal has majority popular support, writes John Perry, and Helen Yuill says the canal raises a wider question faced by all developing countriesYour article (Nicaragua canal critics ‘face wave of persecution’, 4 August) begins by calling the protests against Nicaragua’s interoceanic canal “a mix of anger, fear and defiance not witnessed since the civil war between the Sandinista government and US-backed Contra rebels”. That war cost 30,000 lives, but no one has died in the canal protests.The protesters have organised more than 90 marches, involving thousands of people. Yes, some of the marches have been stopped, arrests have been made and unknown people have attacked some of those taking part. Amnesty International calls this “a campaign of harassment and persecution”. Would they apply the same standards to the police action to stop protests against fracking in the UK? Polls in Britain show that fracking protesters have public opinion on their side. In Nicaragua, every poll has shown that the interoceanic canal has majority popular support, and the protesters are in a minority, even in many of the areas through which the canal will pass. Continue reading...

Soaring value of homes and financial assets will fuel debate about inequality, as report reveals many Britons are not savingA booming City and rising house prices provided a double boost to Britons holding assets in 2016 as they pushed the nation’s wealth through the £10tn mark, according to a new survey.Lloyds Bank’s private banking arm said total household wealth in the UK increased by £892bn last year – with the property and financial markets each responsible for half the rise.Related: Business Today: sign up for a morning shot of financial news Continue reading...

Responses to the prison and criminal justice crisis from Professor Joe Sim, Julian Le Vay and Nik WoodAndrea Albutt, the president of the Prison Governors Association, is correct to say that separating policy and operational control has been problematic (Prisons in crisis due to ‘perverse’ government overhaul, 2 August). However, even if policy and operational control were put back together, or staff numbers were increased, these changes will not solve the crisis in the long term. In 1978, the prison system experienced a profound crisis, despite high staff numbers with little binary divide between policy and operations. Like today, successive governments failed to face up to the depth of the crisis. What happened? It rumbled on through the 1980s before exploding at Strangeways in 1990. Simply tinkering with the system does not work. What is needed is a fundamental transformation, including sentencing policy. How can sentencing a vulnerable woman to 26 weeks in prison for begging for 50p be in any way politically or morally defensible? The crisis is not restricted to prisons, desperate though it is. It cuts through the whole of the criminal justice system in this country, which also needs to be fundamentally transformed including embedding structures of democratic accountability so that state servants are held to account. The complacency of ministers and the MoJ is breathtaking. Strangeways is a voice from the past that reminds us how dangerous such complacency can be.

ONS figures show UK residents are going on more but shorter holidays – with booze cruises becoming much less popularBritons have ditched the traditional two-week holiday in favour of shorter breaks as no-frills airlines have taken off over the last 20 years, according to official figures that also confirm the demise of the booze cruise.Related: Will a holiday make me happy – and if it does, how long will it last?Since the 1990s, we're going on more holidays... but they're shorter than they used to be https://t.co/ixX4S2GbdD pic.twitter.com/yPOMfwTgSy Continue reading...

Taking on Beijing in areas such as intellectual property rights could lead to ‘a downward spiral’ in relationsMoves by Donald Trump to confront China on trade would elicit a “very aggressive” response, a former top US trade negotiator has predicted, as Beijing said an upcoming visit from the US president would help “map out” the next half century of ties between the world’s top two economies.

Visa index shows spending fell for third month in July as rising living costs and Brexit uncertainty hit confidenceBritons are slashing spending on new clothes, cars and foreign holidays, according to new figures that underscore the effect on consumer confidence of rising living costs and the uncertainty surrounding Brexit.Spending fell for a third consecutive month in July, according to Visa’s consumer spending index, which it said was the longest-running slump since February 2013. The 0.8% year-on-year decline in July was worse than June’s 0.2% drop, but not as steep as the fall of 0.9% in May.The leisure sector is likely to have benefited from an early surge in summer staycations Continue reading...

Barclays begins process of moving up to 900,000 accounts to comply with Vickers rules, which aim to avoid taxpayer bailoutsBarclays has started the process of moving up to 900,000 accounts to alternative six-digit sort codes as it prepares for the implementation of regulations intended to avoid taxpayer bailouts.The changes to sort codes began over the past month as Barclays rejigs its business ahead of the introduction of rules that require banks to ringfence their high street operations from riskier activities. The rules, which come into force at the start of 2019, are named after Sir John Vickers, who recommended this course of action in 2011 after the financial crisis. Continue reading...

Workers’ influence over their hours, conditions and pay has been eroded as a culture of insecurity takes holdSomething funny is going on in Britain’s jobs market. And it’s not a joke.Unemployment has dropped to 4.5%, the lowest since 1975. The employment rate is the highest on record at 74.9%. On paper, it’s the tightest labour market in almost half a century, and yet workers are no better off. In fact, they are worse off after adjusting for inflation. Continue reading...

The Irish capital’s economy is surging on predictions of a big business exodus from London, but outside the city the mood is not so buoyantDublin rents have smashed every record. The number of cranes on the city’s skyline has doubled in just a year. Michelin-starred restaurants warn diners not to bother trying for a reservation until 2018. And at a giant new bar and restaurant complex in Temple Bar – immediately next door to U2’s Clarence Hotel, emblematic of Ireland’s boom years – Bono and The Edge last week partied until 6am after a sell-out gig. Is this the birth of the Celtic Tiger, mark II?The economic turnaround has been staggering. As recently as 2012, Ireland’s unemployment stood at 15.2%, wages had been slashed, property prices in Dublin had collapsed by 56% and the country’s economy was on an €85bn life support loan from the EU and the IMF. Today, unemployment is down to just 6.2%, with the Bank of Ireland forecasting GDP growth of 4.8% this year, after a healthy 5.1% last year. In 2017, Ireland will be Europe’s fastest-growing economy – for the fourth year in a row.Related: Irish taoiseach urges Northern Ireland to back staying in single marketPeople really want the Celtic Tiger to come back. They want their stuff back Continue reading...

The banks have, to a certain extent, changed their ways: but cheap credit, low interest rates and mountains of debt are still with usTen years ago this week, the global financial crisis started with a small rumble in France. Local bank BNP Paribas announced it was freezing the assets of three hedge funds with heavy exposures to the US sub-prime mortgage market. A little more than a year later, after the run on Northern Rock and the bailout of Bear Stearns in the US, the full earthquake arrived in the form of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, one of Wall Street’s biggest banks.We soon discovered the full horrors within the financial system. Banks had taken on risks they did not understand and called the process “innovation”. Credit rating agencies had fallen asleep. Weak or incompetent regulators, encouraged by politicians, had been idle. In the UK, RBS would be mostly nationalised and the ailing HBOS was shoved into the arms of Lloyds TSB with a state bailout to follow. Continue reading...

Romano Prodi, once Italian prime minister, says compromise on both sides is essential and that a second referendum would be almost impossibleBritain will be committing economic suicide unless it is prepared to compromise to reach a comprehensive Brexit deal, a former head of the European Commission has warned.Romano Prodi, the economist and former Italian prime minister, said the Brexit negotiations had made little progress in the first year after the referendum and urged both sides to begin making concessions on trade and immigration to reach a deal. Continue reading...

Will Tanner, formerly a senior adviser to Theresa May, says support for ‘unbridled capitalism’ will cost Tories at the pollsThe Tories will lose the next election if they back “unbridled capitalism” and refuse to tax wealth to help the “struggling many”, one of Theresa May’s former advisers has warned.Higher tax on sales of expensive homes, more rights for workers and curbs on immigration should all be backed by the Tories if they are to reach the voters who feel abandoned by globalisation, according to Will Tanner, the former deputy head of May’s policy unit.Related: I saw Theresa May at work. A new message is vital to avoid defeat | Will Tanner Continue reading...

As long as austerity continues to smother the economy it will be impossible to take the necessary steps to restore growthOne of the economy’s lingering tumours, one that needs the financial equivalent of radiation therapy, can be found inside the banking industry.According to a report last week, the banks continue to harbour bad debts that eat away at their health and prevent them functioning properly. Continue reading...

Last Monday, at the start of a chaotic week for his presidency, a defiant Donald Trump claimed there had been an upswing in America’s fortunes. Was he right?It was a boast that every political leader would be thrilled to make in a single tweet, especially when, like Donald Trump, they are in a hole and looking for a spade to dig themselves out. Trump tweeted: “Highest Stock Market EVER, best economic numbers in years, unemployment lowest in 17 years, wages raising, border secure, S.C.: No WH chaos!”, encouraging the world to put aside the unfolding Russia scandal, impotence over North Korean missile launches and the sacking of newly arrived press secretary Anthony “the Mooch” Scaramucci, and look instead at the economic boom apparently unfolding under the president’s administration.Highest Stock Market EVER, best economic numbers in years, unemployment lowest in 17 years, wages raising, border secure, S.C.: No WH chaos!"Corporations have NEVER made as much money as they are making now." Thank you Stuart Varney @foxandfriends Jobs are starting to roar,watch!Stock Market could hit all-time high (again) 22,000 today. Was 18,000 only 6 months ago on Election Day. Mainstream media seldom mentions! Continue reading...

The early signs of the 2007 credit crunch are back. With wages stalled and prices rising, more and more are turning to loans and plastic cards to make ends meetWe are 10 years on from the start of the financial crisis, and unsecured consumer debt has reached more than £200bn for the first time since 2008. It’s up 10%, year on year. The best that can be said of the matter, as compared to the pre-crash debt boom, is that at least there are worries about it.The Bank of England and the credit ratings agency Moody’s are among those who have warned that the situation could be problematic. Which seems like an understatement. These guys are talking about big-picture risks to the economy, which generally adores debt. But at street level, the Financial Conduct Authority warns that one in six people with debt on credit cards, personal lending and car loans is in trouble. That’s 2.2 million stressed-out individuals.Related: Bank of England warns of complacency over big rise in personal debtThe welfare state is used to punish people for being dependent, forcing them into debt – because they have no choice Continue reading...

Readers share their thoughts on electricity generation, cars, cycling, trains and garden citiesGeorge Monbiot makes some useful points in his article bemoaning the influence of the lobbying power of the motor industry (We must break the car’s chokehold on Britain, 2 August). He proposes a modal transport shift to more coach travel and investment in nuclear power plants to power our electric cars. He ignores completely, as usual, the solar option with smaller electric cars and electric bikes and charged by photovoltaics on homes, at work and in public places. In 1993, I bought Hannibal, the 750kg fibreglass Kewet El Jet electric car that we used for a decade to take the children to school, go shopping and to train and bus stations. This first British solar car was largely powered by the 4kWp PV roof on my Oxford ecohouse. Monbiot also ignores the huge trend towards using electric bikes that can be easily solar charged at home or work. We love our cars and bikes, but the trick is to make them much smaller, lighter and solar powered, used locally and to connect with public transport systems for longer distances, so decrying any need for building inevitably toxic new nuclear power stations at all. Car size does matter now if we, as a society, are serious about surviving safely into the 22nd century, so let’s have less of Jeremy Clarkson on TV and more solar-powered Good Lives. It’s the mindset that has to change first, then the hardware.

Given the Trump presidency’s political ineffectiveness it is hard to envisage much changing economically either, be it growth, trade or taxNow that US President Donald Trump has been in office for six months, we can more confidently assess the prospects for the US economy and economic policymaking under his administration. And, like Trump’s presidency more generally, paradoxes abound.The main puzzle is the disconnect between the performance of financial markets and the real. While stock markets continue to reach new highs, the US economy grew at an average rate of just 2% in the first half of 2017 – slower growth than under President Barack Obama – and is not expected to perform much better for the rest of the year.Related: Central banks are ending policies like QE – but they'll be back | Nouriel RoubiniRelated: Donald Trump's tax cuts for the rich won't make America great again | Joseph Stiglitz Continue reading...

Under Thatcher and Blair, it looked unassailable. But now both Britain’s main parties are turning away from unfettered capitalism. By Andy BeckettTwelve years ago, shortly after winning his third consecutive general election, Tony Blair gave the Labour party a brief lecture on economics. “There is no mystery about what works,” he said, crisply, speaking from a podium printed with the slogan “Securing Britain’s Future” at the party conference in Brighton. “An open, liberal economy prepared constantly to change to remain competitive.”Blair rounded on critics of modern capitalism: “I hear people say we have to stop and debate globalisation. You might as well debate whether autumn should follow summer. They’re not debating it in China and India.” He went on: “The temptation is … to think we protect a workforce by regulation, a company by government subsidy, an industry by tariffs. It doesn’t work today.” Britain should not “cling on to the European social model of the past”.Related: The day the credit crunch began, 10 years on: 'the world changed'Related: Globalisation: the rise and fall of an idea that swept the world Continue reading...

This scandal shows how normal it has become to expect to ‘earn’ exploitative rewards without risk or commensurate investment, writes Stephen HillThe abuse of leaseholds (Editorial, 26 July) is exactly that: abuse. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with leasehold/freehold arrangements in the hands of responsible (and preferably regulated) landlords. It’s worth thinking why they were invented and have endured for centuries. They are a highly effective way of allocating capital, risk and reward in the use of land and buildings; they are still much used in commercial property transactions for that purpose. By contrast, private finance initiatives and similar arrangements are designed primarily to make money for all the intermediaries in a set of parasitical financial relationships, all of which could have been structured just as well and more cheaply with leases.This scandal simply shows how normal it has become to expect to “earn” totally exploitative rewards, without risk or commensurate investment. This is just more evidence of the damaging commodification of land, and how, since financial deregulation, global capital flows graze effortlessly on our local housing markets for the risk-free excess profits they so willingly give up. The economist Martin Wolf rightly calls this “the greatest misallocation of resources imaginable”. Continue reading...

Bank of England’s suggestion that a hike is nearing is risky. Also, how the rising Dow shows Trump is delivering – for the richThe Bank of England speaks like a hawk. It acts like a dove.Those in the City expecting the Old Lady to do what it has not done for a decade – raise interest rates – would have been brought up short by the latest decision of its monetary policy committee. At 6-2 for borrowing costs to remain at 0.25%, the vote wasn’t even close.Related: Bank of England keeps interest rates on hold despite inflation fearsRelated: Dow soars to record high as it crosses 22,000 mark for the first time Continue reading...

Speaking to the Guardian 10 years on from the crash, the Bank of England governor recalls how the crisis played outWhen the financial crisis started in August 2007, the reaction of many of the participants was similar to that of the first world war generals in August 1914: they thought it would all be over by Christmas.Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, said that when the markets started to seize up, some of the major players reckoned it was just a blip and that things would soon be back to normal.Related: Britain's finance sector will double in size in 25 years, says Mark CarneyRelated: The day the credit crunch began, 10 years on: 'the world changed' Continue reading...

Bank of England governor predicts financial sector will thrive after Brexit but says there can be no return to the lax pre-2007 regimeThe governor of the Bank of England has predicted that the financial sector could double in size to be 20 times as big as GDP within the next 25 years, but warned that the government must hold its nerve and resist pressure to water down regulation after Brexit.