Economics | The Guardian

The outrageous views of Jeremy Hunt demonstrate failures of logic and humanity (Hunt: Britons must work like the Chinese, 6 October). I suppose we should not be surprised by his apparent ignorance of psychology, motivation and self-worth, but to suggest (as his pronouncements surely do) that the lives of children currently living in poverty will be improved by making parents work harder flies in the face of the current economic, material and psychological circumstances many of these families endure. It is also sheer wilful arrogance to say this at a time when, for instance, in the north-east another 1,700 families are likely to enter poverty as a result of the closure of the Redcar steelworks. Hunt’s view deserves the opprobrium he receives. For him to protest that his remarks have been (wilfully) misinterpreted is further demonstration of his lack of sensitivity and skill as a communicator. Calls for his resignation would not be out of order.

UN’s trade and investment arm says prospects for global growth look bleak unless developed countries can boost growth ratesRich countries must boost public spending and kickstart growth if the world is to avoid a damaging downturn as emerging economies slow, according to the UN’s trade and investment arm, Unctad.In its annual trade and development report, the Geneva-based body warns that developed countries risk sliding into “secular stagnation” – a long period of lacklustre economic growth, driven by weak consumer demand. Continue reading...

VW is preparing to scrap non-essential spending as it battles with the emissions scandal

The fund has over-egged its global growth forecasts four years in a row - now it is asking if this weaker performance is temporary or permanentThe International Monetary Fund is worried. That’s not just because it has shaved its growth forecast for 2015 for the second time in six months. It is not even that the world economy is expected this year to post its weakest performance since it completely stalled in 2009.Related: IMF warns of stagnation threat to G7 economies Continue reading...

Fund’s latest World Economic Outlook cuts global growth forecasts saying emerging markets slowdown may entrench low inflation and promote stagnation in the westThe International Monetary Fund is warning that the weak recovery in the west risks turning into near stagnation after cutting its global economic growth forecast for the fourth successive year.In its half-yearly update on the health of the world economy, the Washington-based fund predicted expansion of 3.1% in 2015, 0.2 points lower than it was expecting three months ago and the weakest performance since the trough of the downturn in 2009.Related: A worried IMF is starting to scratch its head Continue reading...

In Soweto to deliver the annual Nelson Mandela lecture, the rock star economist says the country is more unequal than under apartheid. Daily Maverick reportsThomas Piketty is puzzled. To a near-capacity crowd in Soweto, he confesses that South Africa presents him and his fellow economists with a conundrum.

We check the home secretary’s claims that immigration is pushing thousands out of work, undercutting wages and bringing no economic benefit to the UK

Recently devalued currency overtakes Japan’s yen in terms of world payments, and now only comes behind the US dollar, euro and sterlingChina’s yuan has become the fourth most-used world payment currency, overtaking the Japanese yen, global transaction services organisation Swift has said.The yuan has surpassed seven currencies in the past three years as a payment currency and now only comes after the US dollar, the euro and the sterling. Continue reading...

Malcolm Turnbull calls it a ‘gigantic foundation stone for our future prosperity’ but we’ll have to take his word for it until full text of the deal is releasedThe prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, calls it a “gigantic foundation stone for our future prosperity”, but what does the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) mean for Australia?The short answer is that we don’t know for sure, because the full text of the deal has yet to be released.Related: Andrew Robb: Australia and US close to drug patent compromise for TPP dealRelated: Penny Wong backs fight against free-trade clauses that let companies sue AustraliaRelated: Bill Heffernan vows to block any US beef imports under Trans-Pacific PartnershipRelated: Labor, Greens and crossbenchers concerned at Trans-Pacific PartnershipRelated: Trans-Pacific Partnership taking shape behind closed doors, Andrew Robb says Continue reading...

Australia resists US push for changes to medicine patent rules in 12-nation TPP which government says will deliver ‘enormous benefits’

The United States and 11 Pacific Rim countries announced the most sweeping trade-liberalization pact in a generation on Monday. Australian trade minister Andrew Robb called the Trans-Pacific Partnership a ‘truly transformational’ deal that will help shape the global economy for decades Continue reading...

The chancellor might have looked in control in 2015, but the UK was badly exposed as the global economy falteredOctober 2017: just hours to go, and still the words wouldn’t come. Other conference speeches had been straightforward. A few easy gags about the Labour leader, some gravelly bits about tough choices and the long-term economic plan and then – whoosh! – a rush of confident promises to zap the deficit and win the global race. The hall’s menagerie of blue-rinses and sixth-formers in suits got the message: George Osborne – a man you can trust with your finances, even if not love with all your heart. But now what was he going to say?Related: George Osborne’s conference speech – the verdict | Tom Clark, Anne Perkins, Jonathan Freedland, Mariana Mazzucato and Matthew d’AnconaRelated: George the Builder and the big Tory plan to fix Britain brick by brick Continue reading...

Cutting carbon emissions is but one aspect of the changes needed for the infrastructure and mode of operation of the UK (Osborne reveals deal with former Blair ally, 5 October). On the energy side, we need to increase development and installation of a variety of renewable energy sources. These need to be supported with energy storage schemes. Tidal barrages provide an obvious way to combine both opportunities. We also need to develop and use technology to improve energy efficiency. This involves both more efficient operation of energy use and the reduction in use that is not socially useful. We make many things that add little benefit to life – for instance our overpackaging of many small retail items with moulded plastic. All of this needs to be viewed in ways to make our living more sustainable in the long run in terms of the use of world resources.

Changes aim to stop tax avoidance worth up to $240bn each year but critics say new rules are weak and still offer much scope for non-paymentAn unprecedented international collaboration on tax reform, led by the G20 nations and targeting many of the world’s largest global corporations, will wipe out much of the tax avoidance industry, according to top OECD officials.Related: OECD tax reforms: five key pointsRelated: Revealed: how AstraZeneca avoids paying UK corporation taxRelated: Tax avoidance by corporations is out of control. The United Nations must step in Continue reading...

All the latest economic and financial news, including disappointing surveys of Europe’s dominant service sector and protests at Air France

With their discreet lobbies and Michelin-starred restaurants, the capital’s high-end hotels have become a new green zone of affluence, where the global super-rich book entire floors to do business away from prying eyes

Trans-Pacific Partnership – the biggest trade deal in a generation – would affect 40% of world economy, but still requires ratification from US Congress and other world lawmakersTrade ministers from 12 countries announced the largest trade-liberalizing pact in a generation on Monday. In a press conference in Atlanta, trade ministers from the US, Australia and Japan called the the Trans-Pacific Partnership an “ambitious” and “challenging” negotiation that will cut red tape globally and “set the rules for the 21st century for trade”.Related: From cars to cough medicine: why the Trans-Pacific Partnership matters to you Continue reading...

The IFS and Resolution Foundation thinktanks say the chancellor’s welfare overhaul will leave many families worse off. Do the government’s claims add up?Here is what George Osborne said when he was interviewed on the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday morning: “The typical family with someone working full-time on the minimum wage will be better off, not just a little bit better off but £2,000 a year better off, if you include the lower taxes we are providing through the personal allowance; the childcare for three and four-year-olds. That family is supported.” He also said nine in 10 families would be better off once the whole budget was considered. Continue reading...

UK PMI surveys signal weakest economic growth for 2.5 years as fragility spreads to service sectorBritain’s economy is losing momentum, knocked by weaker household spending and worries about the global outlook, according to the latest in a string of downbeat business surveys.Business activity grew at the slowest pace for more than two years in Britain’s dominant services sector last month, according to the closely watched Markit CIPS PMI report.Related: Bosses of UK's top firms report rising uncertainty over global economyRelated: Growth fears as UK and eurozone service sectors slow - live updates Continue reading...

Nothing is being shared when you hire a cleaner to tidy your house or a car to drive you to work, even if you use an app to do itThe “sharing economy” is a meaningless term that was only coined in the first place because of the tech industry’s desire to pretend everything it does is new and groundbreaking.Now, almost a decade after it started seeing use, it’s worse than simply being meaningless: it’s actively obfuscatory, lumping together a hugely disparate bunch of companies, many of which push the definition to its limits, and the biggest examples of which have nothing to do with “sharing” at all. Continue reading...

Despite a compromise on the length of drug monopolies, a last-minute hitch over New Zealand’s demands for access to dairy markets delayed an agreementA dozen Pacific countries have closed in on a sweeping free trade pact after a breakthrough over how long a monopoly pharmaceutical companies should be given on new biotech drugs.

Poll of chief financial officers finds many are trimming investment and hiring plans due to Chinese downturn and possible interest rate riseChina’s downturn, the prospect of rising interest rates and uncertainty about the global economic outlook have knocked confidence among bosses of the UK’s biggest companies, according to a survey.Chief financial officers (CFOs) polled by the consultancy Deloitte reported a sharp rise in uncertainty facing their businesses and have scaled back their expectations for investment and hiring over the coming year.Related: How China's economic slowdown could weigh on the rest of the world Continue reading...

Why do those who seem happy enough with quantitative easing recoil if it’s for social investment? Jeremy Corbyn’s idea of people’s QE is not so dangerousIn its broadest sense, the phrase “there’s no magic money tree” is just a variation on “money doesn’t grow on trees”, a thing you say to children to indicate that wealth comes not from the beneficence of a magical universe, but from hard graft in a corporeal reality. The pedantic child might point to the discrepant amounts of work required to yield a given amount of money, and say that its value is a social construction.Over time, that loose, rather weak-minded meaning has ceded to a specific economic critique; Jeremy Corbyn – along with anyone who challenges the prevailing fiscal narrative – is dangerous and wrong, since he wants to print money. Money cannot be created from nowhere, because there’s no magic money tree. End of.Related: Corbyn's QE for the people jeopardises the Bank of England's independenceRelated: Jeremy Corbyn has the vision, but his numbers don’t yet add up | Larry Elliott Continue reading...

Despite plans to create a ‘northern powerhouse’, CEBR predicts that the north-south divide will widen over the next decade without more political actionThe economic gap between London and other major cities will widen significantly in the next 10 years, undermining the chancellor’s push to create a “northern powerhouse”, according to a report.London’s economy is forecast to grow 27% by 2025 – almost twice the combined rate of growth in northern English cities, the report by law firm Irwin Mitchell and the Centre for Economics & Business Research (CEBR) found. Continue reading...

The politician’s review of government economic policy during his years in the coalition is lucid, intelligent – and damningThis is the sequel to Vince Cable’s widely praised account of the events surrounding the great crash of 2008. It is a lucid, erudite analysis of the global economy, and Britain’s place in it, in the five years between 2010 and 2015, as viewed from the vantage point of someone who was a senior member of the coalition.It is emphatically not a memoir, although he does offer insights into the tensions between the coalition partners. There are references to “ideologically driven spending cuts”. George Osborne is said to possess “a ruthless eye for party advantage” and Cable nails the lie so assiduously peddled, not only by the Tories but by some of his Liberal Democrat colleagues, that the crisis of 2008 was caused by Labour mismanagement of the public finances: “…not true”, he says. Continue reading...

George Osborne’s kowtowing to China has landed him on weak ground when it comes to opposing Jeremy Corbyn’s rail policyWhile the Conservatives and many members of the media go on and on about the putative need for Labour to apologise for the deficit that was caused not by Gordon Brown but by the banking crisis, an apology has come from an unexpected quarter.In a recent interview with Margaret Thatcher’s biographer, Charles Moore, for the Policy Institute at King’s College, London, the man who ran Thatcher’s press office for 11 years, my old friend Sir Bernard Ingham, said about Thatcherism: “I’m sorry, desperately sorry, that so many people had to suffer the consequences.” Now, it is true that this admission was made in the context of Ingham’s claim that those years he worked for her “produced very substantial improvement in the country” – a debatable point – but it is interesting that he made the apology. He also had the good grace to add: “I wish some privatisation had been carried out better [sic].” I’ll say! Continue reading...

Trade minister says deal is close without revealing whether Australia is standing firm on five-year cap on biologics drug patents against US push for eight yearsThe trade minister, Andrew Robb, has said Australia and the United States are within striking distance of a deal on the monopoly period for biologics medicines which could seal the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).Robb was speaking in Atlanta at the current round of negotiations for the TPP, which if signed would create a preferential trade zone between 12 countries covering 40% of the world’s economy.

But the head of the European Parliament, who is a German Social Democrat, said Europe’s biggest carmaker was still likely to survive the crisisThe head of the European Parliament has said the emissions scandal at Volkswagen would hit the German economy hard but Europe’s biggest carmaker was likely to survive the crisis.Germany’s finance and economy ministers have played down the risk of a broader economic danger for Germany from the scandal.Related: VW emissions scandal is a one-off incident, says motor industry bossRelated: The Volkswagen emissions scandal explained Continue reading...

Labour department’s lower than expected September jobs data reveals 64,000 fewer jobs than forecast, making a rate rise by Federal Reserve less likely

Fewer jobs were created than expected in America last month, more people quit the labor force, and wage growth was disappointing

Killing sprees have occurred almost every day in the US since 2013, but public opinion has still turned against gun controlMass shootings occur almost once a day in the US, yet protecting gun rights seems to concern Americans more than increasing controls on guns.On Thursday, a gunman killed nine people in a community college in Oregon. It was the 994th gun incident in which there were four or more victims (including the shooter) since the start of 2013, according to the website Mass Shooting Tracker. Continue reading...

Companies created jobs for the 28th month running and in September they hired new staff at the fastest pace for three monthsA big pick-up in housebuilding helped the UK’s construction sector enjoy its fastest growth for seven months in September and boosted job creation, according to a survey.All parts of the industry from civil engineering to housebuilders saw output rise in September. That lifted the key measure of business activity for the whole construction sector to 59.9 from 57.3 in August, the latest Markit/CIPS UK construction PMI showed. Continue reading...

Has capitalism had its day? At a Guardian Live/Discuss debate in Manchester, Guardian Members listened to two opposing arguments before voting for or against the motion - the markets will save usThe late Nobel prize-winning economist, Milton Friedman, once described free-market capitalism as “the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another”. Yet since the 2008 financial crash, this understanding has come in for intense criticism from those who believe that unregulated markets are the cause of - rather than the solution to - many of society’s problems.

The CBI and EEF sceptical about government plan to create 3m apprenticeships in five years, fearing high cost to business and low quality of trainingThe government’s plan to charge a new levy on businesses to help reach ambitious apprenticeship targets is facing resistance from big employer groups who warn ministers not to sacrifice quality of training.Chancellor George Osborne announced the levy in his summer budget as a key part of his bid to show he was on the side of working people. The government has pitched it to business as a way to end years of under-investment in training and solve skills shortages with 3m new apprenticeships by 2020.Related: Apprenticeships: it's quality, not numbers that matterRelated: Cameron pledges to create 50,000 new apprenticeships using Libor fine Continue reading...

Sector growth slows in September, prompting manufacturers to lay off workers, against backdrop of uncertain global outlookTough export markets and weaker consumer spending continued to take their toll on UK factories last month, prompting the first job losses for the sector in more than two years, according to a survey that echoed signs of manufacturing weakness around the world.The performance at UK factories was lacklustre in September, when growth slipped to a three-month low. Against the backdrop of warnings about the uncertain outlook for global growth, eurozone manufacturing also lost momentum and output from Chinese factories continued to fall. Continue reading...

Finance institute forecasts net capital outflow from emerging markets for first time since 1988 leaving states vulnerable to ‘capital drought’Global investors will suck capital out of emerging economies this year for the first time since 1988, as they brace themselves for a Chinese crash, according to the Institute of International Finance.Capital flooded into promising emerging economies in the years that followed the global financial crisis of 2008-09, as investors bet that rapid expansion in countries such as Turkey and Brazil could help to offset stodgy growth in the debt-burdened US, Europe and Japan.Related: IMF's emerging markets warning is timely Continue reading...

All the latest economic and financial news, as China’s factory output falls at its fastest pace in six years and British firms trim workforces

Although the oil price has fallen as instability has risen across the Middle East it doesn’t mean the region is less strategically important. The west ignores the region at its perilAmong today’s geopolitical risks, none is greater than the long arc of instability stretching from the Maghreb to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. With the Arab Spring an increasingly distant memory, the instability along this arc is deepening. Indeed, of the three initial Arab spring countries, Libya has become a failed state, Egypt has returned to authoritarian rule, and Tunisia is being economically and politically destabilised by terrorist attacks.The violence and instability of North Africa is now spreading into sub-Saharan Africa, with the Sahel – one of the world’s poorest and most environmentally damaged regions – now gripped by jihadism, which is also seeping into the Horn of Africa to its east. And, as in Libya, civil wars are raging in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia, all of which increasingly look like failed states.Related: The Opec oil price still matters (just not as much as before) Continue reading...

Study predicts that raising statutory pay floor will lead to sharp increase in proportion of people whose wages are set by the stateThe number of employees earning the minimum wage will double to more than 10% of the UK workforce by the end of this parliament, according to new research.A study published on Thursday by the Resolution Foundation, timed to coincide withthe 20p an hour increase in the minimum wage, found that the decision by George Osborne to lift the statutory pay floor through a national living wage would result in a sharp increase in the numbers of people having their wages set by the state.Related: Tory welfare cuts will destroy benefit of new living wage, research shows Continue reading...

For Corbyn, opposition to Trident is a key issue but to his critics it is a reminder of how out of step Labour’s pacifist leader George Lansbury was in the 1930sIt was a tale of two conferences over a week in which the dazzling Brighton sunshine of an Indian summer shone equally on all the delegates.To supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, their Labour conference marked the start of a healing process within the party as MPs from other camps watched the new leader begin to explain his values to the nation.Related: Labour split on defence grows as Eagle criticises Corbyn over TridentRelated: A Labour conference for activists – while Corbyn works out what to do Continue reading...

Prospect of US interest rates hike and weakness in China contributing to uncertainty and higher market volatility, says Christine LagardeA marked slowdown in big emerging market countries will cut global growth to its lowest level since the deep recession of 2009, the head of the International Monetary Fund has warned.Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s managing director, said forecasts to be published by her organisation next week would show activity expanded by less than the 3.4% recorded in 2014 – the joint weakest since the world economy came to a standstill six years ago.Related: IMF chief warns of slower growth after China shockwavesRelated: IMF: China slowdown could keep global interest rates low Continue reading...

UK growth was weaker than previously believed in 2010, but stronger in the three years that followed, the ONS has saidCast your mind back to early 2013. The economy’s recovery from the deep recession of 2008-09 had stalled for a second time and there was much speculation that Britain was on the brink of a triple-dip recession.It now turns out that the economy was under no such threat. The latest data revisions from the Office for National Statistics show that growth was weaker than previously thought in 2010, but stronger by an average 0.4 percentage points in each of the next three years. There was no double-dip recession, let alone a third setback. Continue reading...