Economy
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Market Talk – April 21, 2025
ASIA: The major Asian stock markets had a mixed day today: • NIKKEI 225 decreased 450.36 points or -1.30% to 34,279.92 • Shanghai increased 14.70 points or 0.45% to 3,291.43 • Hang Seng closed • ASX 200 closed • SENSEX increased 855.30 points or 1.09% to 79,408.50 • Nifty50 increased 273.90 points or 1.15% to 24,125.55 The major Asian currency…
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Institutional Report On The Europe – All Countries
Our Institutional Report covering Europe’s countries with their forecasts generally out to 2032 has been a monumental effort. We greatly appreciate your patience, but this is vital for the decision-making for future investment in Europe. Things are certainly different from the past. Countries like Sweden and Switzerland, which had been neutral during previous world wars, have surrendered their neutrality and…
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Labour’s strategic error on tax
Two things have become clear to many people since Labour came to government. The first is that the party had done less preparation work for becoming the government than Blair/Brown did in 1997. Given what happened in 2019 its focus was understandably on winning the election. There were important exceptions of course, in the areas of worker’s rights and…
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Why can’t we do fiscal policy in a grown up way?
I suspect to most people what Rachel Reeves announced yesterday went like this. The OBR published a forecast, something it has to do twice a year. Compared to its forecast that went with last year’s October budget, things have got worse, and if Reeves did nothing she would now breach her fiscal rules. As a result she chose to…
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Market Talk – March 24, 2025
ASIA: The major Asian stock markets had mixed day today: • NIKKEI 225 decreased 68.57 points or -0.18% to 37,608.49 • Shanghai increased 5.20 points or 0.15% to 3,370.03 • Hang Seng increased 215.84 points or 0.91% to 23,905.56 • ASX 200 increased 5.70 points or 0.07% to 7,936.90 • SENSEX increased 1,078.87 points or 1.40% to 77,984.38 • Nifty50…
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Market Talk – March 17, 2025
ASIA: The major Asian stock markets had a green day today: • NIKKEI 225 increased 343.43 points or 0.93% to 37,396.52 • Shanghai increased 6.57 points or 0.19% to 3,426.13 • Hang Seng increased 185.59 points or 0.77% to 24,145.57 • ASX 200 increased 64.41 points or 0.84% to 7,854.10 • SENSEX increased 341.04 points or 0.46% to 74,169.95 •…
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Current UK stagnation may have many causes, but one we know about is the UK media. Plus why the UK definition of a recession is no longer fit for purpose.
In the UK the definition of recession used by most people is two successive quarters of falling GDP. This definition always involved a knife edge problem. If GDP fell by 0.1% in two successive quarters we were officially in recession, but if output fell by 1% in one quarter and grew by 0.1% in the next there was no…
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Tusk Wew Don’t Need USA
QUESTION: You said Europe thinks it no longer needs the United States to defend it. Do you have any leaders saying that publicly? UT ANSWER: Polish PM Donald Tusk made a speech before he took his flight to London for the European Ukraine summit that was planned well in advance. He said: “500 million Europeans are asking 300 million…
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Is Trump a Populist or a Fascist?
Answering questions of this type inevitably involves a discussion of definitions, in this case about what populism and fascism actually mean. It is perfectly reasonable to therefore ask whether the answer matters, if by making reasonable changes in definition we can get a different answer. After all we know what Trump is and what he is doing, so why…
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Quantifying the continuing UK public spending squeeze
In her October budget the Chancellor raised total government spending by 1.8% of GDP compared to the plans of her predecessors, which means that total public spending as a ratio to GDP stays pretty flat over the 5 year forecast period. (Anyone who calls this the share of government spending in GDP is either being sloppy or deliberately misleading.…
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