The runaway inconsistencies of the Labour government’s handling of the economic crisis in Britain are truly terrifying. Last week, they began printing money to buy back debt they themselves have issued, a process I described as like a snake eating its own tail. Technically, this is considered ...

I’m not a practising economist, but I did read an economics course at university, along with psychology. Because of it, I’m probably slightly better equipped to understand what’s going on now than the average Jo(e). The word “slightly” is important here because it means...

Everyone seems to be struggling for money right now, don’t they? Everywhere you turn. There’s nothing more isolating than discovering you’ve got no money, or not enough money to get you through to pay day if you’re lucky enough to have a job. But remember, the very rich are f...

An article on the housing crisis is available on SSRN, just at the time that Congress reconsiders the question of whether homeowners should be permitted to modify their mortgage loans in bankruptcy, just like every other debtor can do, for credit card debt to debt on the purchase of that luxur...

So HBOS was in the doo-doo. It was "too big to fail". So it would have to be nationalised like Northern Rock. But wait ! There was a better answer. Why not steer it into the arms of a bigger, financially sound bank - like Lloyds. OK, that would create a "much too big to fail" bank and breach all kin...

Not surprisingly, this New York Times article, written in the paper's time honored method of recourse to authority, ignores the more serious social implications of the economic restructuring that it describes. The reporters, Peter Goodman and Jack Healy, walk up to the edge of the water by recognizi...

David Pilling in the FT (registration may be required) reports that Japanese are looking back nostalgically to the Golden (and pre-industrial) Age before the arrival of Commodore Perry's squadron in 1852. On a visit to Tokyo this week, on more than one occasion when I asked how Japan should tackle t...

The FT finished on Friday only about 50 points above its November low, the Dow's just hanging on above 7000. Yesterday it dropped another 5% to a new low for this crisis. But given that the 2003 bottom (3300-ish ?) was caused by evaporating dot-com illusions, whereas this one's more down to various ...

The government has said on a number of occasions that it wants the banks to resume lending money to home-buyers and small businesses at the same levels as before the start of the credit crunch. There’s only one problem: doing so would be a sure-fire way to bankrupt the banks. And either the go...

Lord Mandelson will not make the decision over whether to sanction a taxpayer bail-out of an imploding British van-maker owned by his friend, the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, it has been confirmed. LDV was on the brink yesterday as insiders warned that it would collapse within days unless it rec...