Editor's Blog

The Government is completely wrong in its policy of trying to solve the problems of the housing market by guaranteeing mortgages. The problem we have in the UK is that there are not enough homes available. The only realistic solution is to build more-and quickly. How can this be achieved?  High Street Bank sponsored Shared Ownership deals that the way forward. The banks can work with major b....

MasterCard have joined the " Better Than Cash Alliance". Of course, "joined" doesn't really cover their involvement. The Plastic Peddlers have given this odd-ball alliance a grant of $1.5 Million to fund marketing aimed at persuading poor people on our planet to get even poorer by resorting to using expensive cards. It is understandable that MasterCard (and their close relations, Visa) are....

Both the US and the UK have reported falling unemployment in the last couple of years. Some have regarded this as a miracle, given the low GDP growth in both countries and the rising unemployment experienced in the likes of Spain and Portugal. There has been no need for miraculous intervention, however. The improving performance has been largely down to Government intervention. Both Admini....

A group of students and professors from Yale University have found a fungi in the Amazon rainforest that eats plastic !! This could be the answer environmentally friendly way reduce credit card debt :)

There is now a confusing proliferation of mobile payment methods. PingIt; Zinc; Droplet; Zapp; etc, etc are all names to conjure with - but what exactly do they do, and how is one different from the other? The answer to both the above questions is "I don't know" - and neither do you! Of course, it should have been a much simpler situation. The UK Payments Council, bless them, announced a....

  Some great job figures recently.
The UK has seen employment grow by 1.6 Million in the last 3 years.
Of course, there are still issues:
• average wages are still falling, taking into account inflation.
• average productivity has gone down by about 10%
• there are still nearly 3 million unemployed in the UK.
I think we ha....

The Times newspaper the other day commented that Stephen Hester, the CEO of Royal Bank of Scotland Group, had made sterling efforts to shrink the bank which "have pleased the bank's shareholders".

The Times made this comment in a speculative article which also mused that Mr Hester might be thinking of leaving the bank to go to an unspecified place where his "talents will be more a....

The popular view is that "Free Trade" i.e the elimination of barriers created by import quotas, taxes and duties, leads to "wealth creation".

The question arises, however : wealth for whom?

In Columbia earlier this week, coffee producers were demonstrating against the fact that the prices they are receiving for their produce in local markets are below the cost of pr....

China has just passed the US to become the World's largest trading nation.

This was not unexpected and the gap will grow.

Whilst the US and Europe have been attempting to act as the World's policemen, sending troops to almost every corner of the planet, China has concentrated on economic growth. 

The West, whilst waging "war on terror" has weakly s....

The French Labour Minister caused a stir the other day by pronouncing his homeland as "bankrupt".
Strictly speaking of course France is not bankrupt. It can happily continue to trade due to the support of its parent "company" i.e. the G8 nations.
None of the G8 (Canada, USA, UK, Italy, Germany, Russia, Japan and France) would dare to let another member go bankrupt. Such an occurren....