Nigel Stanley

The sun might be streaming through the office windows, but it doesn’t take much time spent reading newspapers or browsing on-line to darken my mood at the moment. What could have been a progressive moment looks as if it may be passing.

Big bonuses are back, the Guardian tells us. The dominant economic problem is not rising unemployment, but excessive public spending – or so everyone seems to think.  Mervyn King joins the call for spending cuts in what many are seeing as an attack on a government that is already committed to an extremely tight public spending round. Ministers have got into difficulties explaining their plans.

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Adam Lent

Maybe someone can solve this for me.  Which one of these is more likely to thrust the UK into further economic turmoil in the next two years: another massive bubble and crash in the City or the Monetary Policy Committee making some duff decisions on interest rates? 

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• Recovery?
  Duncan uses LabourList to warn the government not to overdo the talk of recovery.
• More expecting economy to improve than any point since 1997
  MORI find “For the first time since the turn of the millennium, those who think the economy will get better over the next 12 months now outnumber those who think it will get worse.” But this isn’t that surprising. It more reflects a view that it couldn’t get any worse, rather than green shoots bursting out all over.
• Why we need more workers in the boardroom
  Lynne Featherstone MP suggests on Liberal Conspiracy that a stronger workforce voice in corporate decision making could make many companies more secure.
• Hanging tough with Keynes – Paul Krugman Blog
  Paul Krugman reflects on managing public opinion on public spending.

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Brendan Barber

A new survey from Pricewaterhouse Coopers  suggests that there is to be a further round of pension scheme closures. This is what I have said about this today:

“Companies are using the recession as an excuse to make savage cuts in pensions. But recessions are short term, and pensions are long term investments that can ride ups and downs in the economy.

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Nigel Stanley

There has been understandable and predictable outrage at the size of Stephen Hester’s pay packet at the Royal Bank of Scotland. But, while I share the anger, it is not entirely a straightforward issue. The government can at least claim that he will only get top whack if he helps the tax-payer make a profit of the sums used to rescue RBS – a useful reminder that the  bank bail-outs were not simple hand-outs of public cash.

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Nicola Smith

Read the TUC Recession Report for June 2009

Today we have published a special edition of our Recession Report. As well as the regular analysis of the most recent unemployment data, we have considered how this recession compares to those of the 1980s and 1990s. The news is not great. In contrast to some commentators, who have been surprisingly upbeat about a 7.2% unemployment rate, we believe it is far too early to talk of green shoots in the labour market.

In both previous recessions unemployment continued rising for at least a year after GDP started to increase, suggesting we are still some way off unemployment’s peak. And over the first four quarters of this downturn there was a 30 per cent increase in unemployment – greater than the same period in the 1980s (29%) and the 1990s (22%).

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• Swiss offer millionaires a haven away from the poor | World news | The …
  This is almost funny. The Swiss canton of Obwalden is broke because it's a tax haven. So it's ruining its natural beauty by selling it off to the super-rich. They then won't pay any tax because it's a tax-haven, so what do they do when they run out of cash again?

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• Preferences in politics
  What role should expressed preferences play in politics? Two apparently separate things raise this issue.First, Danny Finkelstein
• The ‘Final Third’ levy: public or private asset?
  Calvin has more to say on paying for universal broadband and Nigel has commented in reply.

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Alice Hood

Yesterday the government launched the UK Climate Projections, a major set of new scientific data that sets out how the UK’s climate is likely to change over the coming years. The headline messages of the projections are stark, showing a future of heatwaves, floods and storms.  They add yet more urgency to the need for governments to agree a bold deal to tackle future emissions when they meet in Copenhagen later this year.  But they also show that a certain amount of climate change is already beginning to happen because of past emissions.  

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• One way to save billions
  Richard Murphy helps take a PFI contract to pieces

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