Janet Williamson
The ban on short-selling in financial stocks brought in at the end of last week by the FSA and the SEC was greeted with some scepticism as well as relief, but it has been credited with helping to boost the stock market after its recent plunges. The actions of the regulators have been mirrored by some of the world’s major pension funds, which have also moved to prevent their shares in various financial companies being lent out to short-sellers.
Paul Sellers
Yesterday the Labour Party Conference voted to end the UK’s individual opt-outs from the Working Time Directive. Predictably, the Daily Mail reported this as a ‘lurch to the left’ . It looks to me more like a lurch towards common sense.
The 48 hour limit on average weekly working time is justified by a wealth of scientific evidence that regularly working long hours is bad for your health. The mains risks are heart disease and stress related illness
Philip Pearson
Good to see Chris Davies MEP, the European Parliament’s lead on carbon capture & storage, not letting the financial crisis derail investment in new green technologies. He is looking for support for 10 billion euros worth of carbon allowances to finance large-scale clean coal demonstration projects. Davies was speaking at the launch in Brussels of a new McKinsey study ,CCS: Assessing the Economics, showing that CCS has the potential to capture up to 400 million tonnes of CO2 by the mid 2020s, one-fifth of Europe’s expected CO2 emissions at that time
Richard Exell
“Go back to Keir Hardie, and his maiden speech in the Commons in 1893 was about people working in return for their benefits. This has always been at the heart of what the Labour movement believes in.”
James Purnell interviewed in Fabian Review, autumn 2008, p 10, (not on the Fabian website yet)
I suppose that the Labour equivalent of a ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ t-shirt would be one asking What Would Keir Hardie Do?,so claiming his authority for workfare is quite a clever ploy during the Labour Party conference. In fact, Hardie wasn’t talking about benefits at all, but a look at what he was talking about can lead us to a useful – but very different – way of thinking about public policy on unemployment.
Nicola Smith
Recent events have spelt out the important role that regulation should play in ensuring fairness and stability in our economy – and suggest significant Government policy shifts. Could this conversion also provide the opportunity for Government to accept the case for sensible regulation at the bottom of the labour market?
Adam Lent
I work on the floor below Nigel and the sound of the gauntlet hitting the ground as he wrote that last post was deafening. So what economic policies should social democrats be championing now given that: a) we are about to enter a serious recession and we need to protect those who face hardship while also finding a way out; b) the credibility of free market solutions and financial services as a growth leader is shot? These are my top five but willing to be challenged.
Nigel Stanley
Economic policy has been unfashionable on the left (in its broadest sense) for more than a decade.
New Labour has never been very interested in developing a critique of the way the economy worked. Despite real efforts to relieve poverty through tax credits, the minimum wage and other measures, it has always wanted to be the pro-business-as-it-actually-exists-today party. It has never had much of a vision of different ways of doing business or alternative models for running the economy (and I mean more social-market in style, not untried utopias).
Tim Page
Some have described the past week as the most turbulent for the financial system since the Great Depression. As that week closes, we must renew our focus on building a strong, sustainable economy. In particular, consideration of the needs of the ‘real’ economy, the industries that create the (real) wealth and provide the (real) jobs, is necessary.
With that in mind, today’s Ofsted report, which argues that nearly half of all maths lessons are not good enough, makes more gloomy reading.
Adam Lent
Paul Mason highlights this superb but pretty scary Wall Street Journal article today. The WSJ isn’t exactly what you would call a liberal paper which makes one section towards the end of the article even more striking.
