Britain

Below is a link to an article I wrote about the Bank of England's aggressive 1.5% interest rate cut that appeared in yesterday's Guardian newspaper.The unkindest cut, GuardianThe long and short of it is that I am very skeptical about the…

The Bank of England has cut interest rates to 3%, a 1 1/2 point cut. Just weeks ago, the BoE Governor Mervyn King was writing to the Government explaining how they had let inflation run out of control. However, with the economy tanking,…

This post is a guide to understanding the GDP deflator, which the government uses to arrive at the economic growth numbers we all hear on TV or read about in the newspaper. This post is the product of a lot of background research and…

The rate of decline in house prices in the UK is accelerating. Today the Nationwide released their monthly UK-wide figures on house prices and the numbers were fairly grim. House prices fell 1.4% in the last month alone, bringing the…

Credit markets continue to return to less extreme levels. While we are nowhere near where we were before the onset of the Lehman-induced panic, we are well off the panic levels of the worst of the crisis.The Times of London is reporting…

In Scotland, one of the UK's most venerated names, the Royal Bank of Scotland, a bank that prints its own bank notes as legal tender, has been eviscerated by the over-leveraging and risk-taking of its CEO Sir Fred Goodwin. Sir Fred, an…

If you don't think that the recapitalisation scheme by Gordon Brown doesn't matter, then take a look no further than Nationwide Building Society. The mutual company is not under pressure in the equity markets like RBS, HBOS or Barclays.…

Gillian Tett makes a good point in today's FT about the clear benefits of a systemic solution to crisis. Where the UK policy makers were bumbling along until today, they have taken the problem firmly in hand, finally recognizing the…

In July, I made my ten predictions for the markets and global economy for the rest of the year. Some of my predictions were pretty pedestrians, and some were fairly bold. Let's take a look and see how I'm doing.Here's what I originally…

The Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank led a coordinated rate cut effort as the official response to the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression gathers steam. The official response in Europe and…