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The UK’s official inflation rate has hit 4.8%, up on the previous month and its highest rate since September 2008. Driving the rate are big increases, over the year, in
Good news as the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted to once again hold its base rate steady at 0.1%. This comes a day after the US Federal
The Bank of England’s new chief economist, Huw Pill, gave his first interview in the job to the Financial Times a few days ago. It will do little to confirm
The UK’s official measure of inflation, the Office for National Statistics’ Consumer Price Index (CPI) came in slightly lower than widely anticipated, falling from 3.0% in August to 2.9% in
The paper outlines the case for fiscal policy to regain a permanent status of primacy in modern macroeconomic management, beyond the pandemic emergency and makes the case for public job programmes
“After decades of assault by state-shrinking ideologues, a collision of crises has revealed how only the power of good government can save us. Covid, climate catastrophe and Brexit crashed in on a public realm stripped bare by a decade of extreme austerity. Here all the best writers and thinkers on the good society show recovery is possible, with a radical rethink of all the old errors. Read this, and feel hope that things can change. ”
Polly Toynbee
The budget was singularly lacking in ambition when it came to the government’s role in creating a sustainable, inclusive and investment-led recovery.
There was no new green stimulus despite the UK facing a £100bn funding gap to reach its net-zero by 2050 target and despite its hosting of the global COP26 climate change summit this November.
“I am highly sceptical about this story of ‘pent-up demand’. A shrinkage in national income by 10% implies a fall, not rise, in national saving. Saving out of income may go up, but income itself is lower. That’s why it’s not like in a war, when you have full employment and rising wages, but less to spend money on. “
The focus of economic policy should be on maintaining a high, sustainable level of employment. This is correct theoretically, practically, and socially. It counterbalances the capitalist market system’s tendency not to create a high level of employment.
The government’s ineptness in handling the health crisis will thus impact both the supply and the demand sides of the economy.
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