The world’s largest companies are hoarding cash and cutting productive investment at the same time. The Financial Times reports a survey from one leading ratings’ agency, Standard & Poor’s, which shows that the 2,000 largest private firms globally are sitting on a cash mountain of $4.5 trillion, which is approximately double the size of Britain’s annual GDP. […]
Posts Tagged ‘Investment’
Labour will inherit a crisis, not a recovery
Jun 27th, 2014 by Michael Burke.At a certain point in the next few months the recession in Britain will officially be over as the real level of GDP will finally exceed its previous peak in the 1st quarter of 2008. The media coverage will be generally very favourable, in the hope that this will boost the Tory vote and vindicate the […]
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Who’s fooling who at the BBC about the rise of China?
Feb 27th, 2014 by Michael Burke.Robert Peston is the BBC’s new economics editor. He has opened his new role with a programme called ‘How China Fooled the World’. For a time it is available on BBC iPlayer and Peston’s own summary is here. In the blog and the programme Peston argues that China dodged the global economic crisis by increasing […]
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Only public investment can save Britain from semi-permanent austerity
Nov 17th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.There are four reasons why the future of the UK economy, both internally and externally, does not look good. No sustainable recovery can occur till these four obstacles have been cleared, and of that there is no sign. First, the collapse in business investment has been devastating: it is still 25% below its pre-crash level. […]
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Why public investment is falling
Nov 13th, 2013 by Michael Burke.The level of public investment is falling in most of the advanced industrialised economies including Britain. The chart below appeared in the Financial Times and has attracted some publicity because it shows this decline in the US in stark terms.
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The 2008 crash was no blip, but a complete change in trajectory for the British economy
Oct 31st, 2013 by Jon Lansman.Richard Murphy this morning draws attention to a quite startling graph comes from an academic paper by Prof Richard Jones of Sheffield University on the need to invest in innovation As Richard says, “what the graph shows is something anyone interested in political economy needs to understand: 2008 was not a blip; it was a complete change […]
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Why do we have ‘austerity’ and what is the alternative?
Jun 25th, 2013 by Michael Burke.The national launch of the People’s Assembly Against Austerity is a very welcome development. It brings together a number of the largest unions, anti-cuts group and political forces both inside and outside the Labour Party in opposition to austerity policies. Many will have been drawn into active opposition to government policies because a single aspect of them, […]
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It’s lack of demand, stupid!
May 27th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Even the IMF is now insisting that growth must have priority over continuing austerity, but neither the growth-sayers nor the austerians have yet recognised that the fundamental problem for post-crash capitalism is lack of economic demand. Equity markets have surged in recent weeks, not because the real economy is recovering, but because central banks – the […]
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Investment not cuts – Labour needs to deliver a decisive break from austerity
May 20th, 2013 by Ben Folley.Ed Miliband has a significant opportunity to decidedly shift the terms of the debate on the economy, but to do so he will have to turn Labour policy on its head. The austerity agenda which has dominated the UK’s economic debate since 2010 is increasingly seen as inseparable from a stagnant economy and growing poverty […]
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A budget that ignores reality: ideological and macro-economically hollow
Mar 22nd, 2012 by Ann Pettifor.Since 2009 the economy has struggled to recover from the mire of a slump caused by the banking sector. But each time economic activity quickens, it hits a series of buffers. These buffers are well known , but denied by the Chancellor: a vast overhang of private debt now slowly being de-leveraged; a banking sector […]
