Clik here to view.
Five myths about the financial transaction tax
Yesterday Nicolas Sarkozy announced that France would press ahead unilaterally with a Financial Transaction Tax. Advocates of a Robin Hood Tax were swift to celebrate, myself included. Needless to say,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What’s your money up to right now?
Do you remember the Paddington Bear story where Paddington goes to get his pound note back from Floyds bank, and they give him somebody else’s pound? He knows, because he marked his specially with a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dirty banks: who’s bankrolling climate change
The banking industry has a big part to play in financing the emerging green economy. At the same time, it continues to finance the biggest polluters, the coal industry in particular. On the one hand,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Where do the banks put their money?
Here’s a really important graph from the Positive Money campaign. Banks have the power to create money, and they have a choice about who they make that money for. Here’s where their money has gone in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Book review: Future Money, by James Robertson
In Future Money: Breakdown or Breakthrough? money campaigner James Robertson makes the case for wholesale reform of the money system. At the heart of our debt problem, of our desperate need to grow,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why the banks can’t lend
Last night chancellor George Osborne made his annual speech to the City at Mansion House. His headline announcement was that since the banks weren’t lending enough to businesses and consumers, the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Barclays betrayed its own heritage
Yesterday the news emerged that Barclays Bank has been handed a record fine of £290 million for manipulating an inter-bank interest rate. Today the Financial Services Authority has named Barclays as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Finally, a government bank for small business
This week Britain’s business secretary, Vince Cable, announced the creation of a government bank for small business. It will start with a clear balance sheet and bypass the ‘broken banking system’ that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How real is the threat of bank flight?
Chancellor George Osborne is in the news today with new legislation to ringfence retail and investment banking, and tougher powers for the regulator. We’ve been waiting for this for a little while, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Diversity in banking
I received this graphic in my email today. It’s one of the topics of the Transforming Finance conference which is going on today, looking at why Britain might be better off with more local and...
View ArticleWhere are the world’s safest banks?
Since every country regulates its banking in its own way, financial stability varies immensely from country to country. Some places value stability more than growth, and ask more of their banks....
View ArticleClik here to view.
The coming first world debt crisis, by Ann Pettifor
In 2008, the Queen posed a question at the London School of Economics: how come nobody saw the economic crisis coming? She received a variety of answers, both on the day and at later discussions. No...
View Article
