Ben Moxham

The World Bank has just published its annual “Doing Business” report. This flagship publication ranks countries on how easy it is for business to do everything from starting up to enforcing property rights.

It is high influential, but also highly controversial in pressuring governments to scrap any sort of regulation – from employment protection to paying taxes. This year’s report has responded to some union criticisms but is still largely a roadmap for “doing business as usual”.

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Richard Exell

Independent economists continue to revise down their forecasts for UK economic growth. The October edition of the Treasury’s round-up of the forecasts for the UK economy made by City and other independent economists shows that their forecasts for both 2011 and 2012 are significantly more gloomy than they were as recently as last month:

• Average forecast for 2011 is 1.0% GDP growth, last month it was 1.2%.
• Average forecast for 2012 is 1.5%, last month it was 1.8%.

These surveys always include some that are a couple of weeks old, so HM Treasury also gives the average for new forecasts and the movement is in the same direction:

• Last month new surveys forecast 2011 growth at 1.1%, this month this is down to 0.9%
• Even more worryingly, the average new forecast for 2012 is down from 1.7% to 1.3%.

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Owen Tudor

Respected medical humanitarian organisation Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) have issued a report today, Five Lives: How a Financial Transaction Tax Could Support Global Health. The report says that the draft EU directive for a financial transactions tax (FTT) could help save millions of lives if a percentage were allocated to global health – something the TUC supports. It tells five personal stories which show the transformative impact an FTT allocation to global health could have. The report looks at interventions that can prevent a child from becoming severely malnourished to begin with; protect children from deadly measles outbreaks; prevent a baby from acquiring HIV through childbirth; get people on life-saving tuberculosis treatment sooner; and save lives while dramatically reducing the spread of HIV through treatment. “It’s time global health got its bailout.” said Dr Tido von Schoen-Angerer, Executive Director at MSF’s Access Campaign.

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Philip Pearson

Here’s why CCS is vital for tackling climate change, and why the Coalition’s decision to cancel the Longannet project matters. A UN Special Report on CCS (2005) identified CSS as part of “a portfolio of measures that will be needed” to achieve the stabilisation of greenhouse gas emissions. It is a process that involves separating CO2 from industry and energy-related sources, transport to a storage site and long-term storage away from the atmosphere. The UN study comments that most future energy scenarios project that the supply of primary energy will continue to be dominated by fossil fuels until at least mid-century. Further, “most scenarios for global energy use project a substantial increase of CO2 emissions throughout the century in the absence of specific actions to mitigate climate change.”

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Philip Pearson

The TUC and trade unions in the power sector are reacting with dismay to the Government’s decision to cancel the world’s first commercial carbon capture project at Longannet, the coal-fired power station in Fife, Scotland. The decision threatens the UK’s leadership in producing  vital technology to combat climate change.   And any delay to the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) puts at risk the 10,000 or more jobs dependent upon coal power and coal mining in the UK. It’s much more likely that our global competitors will now reap the benefits of the UK government’s inaction and become the winners in the race to develop an effective version of this emerging technology.

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Owen Tudor

Jeffrey Sachs, who may be reviewing his title of “personal adviser” to George Osborne in the light of the Fox-Werritty scandal, has written in the New Statesman to urge the Chancellor and the Prime Minister to back a Robin Hood Tax at the G20 summit in Cannes at the beginning of November. And to help join the campaign to persuade the USA to follow suit, rather than – as the UK is doing now – hiding behind the USA’s opposition (some leadership!).

Sachs, who supports the Government’s deficit reduction strategy, nevertheless welcomes the positive impact a Robin Hood Tax would have on the usefulness/efficiency of the financial sector, welcomes the opportunity it provides to increase funding for eradicating global poverty and tackling climate change. And he also supports the redictributive effect that a Robin Hood Tax would have, taking from the rich and giving to the poor.

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Duncan Weldon

Today’s FT front page story reports that Mervyn King is admitting that both the recovery and the public finances are off track. So far so good, it’s welcome to see a senior policymaker admitting this and the fact that King is saying this comes as no surprise given the Bank’s decision to resume quantitative easing – a clear sign that it does not think things are going well.

However King goes on to blame to the crisis in the Eurozone for the economy’s current problems:

“We were on track,” Sir Mervyn told a business audience in Liverpool, “but the problems in the euro area and the marked slowing in the world economy have lengthened the period over which a return to normality is likely”.

I’m not so sure about this. It is already fairly clear that this is also George Osborne’s line – ‘things were going fine but now there’s a problem in the Eurozone which is impacting us’. I  don’t doubt for a moment that the major crisis in Europe is impacting on UK business confidence, hitting our exporters and has the potential to be a major blow to the financial system.

But the economy hasn’t grown for nine months. Our problems clearly predate the intensification of the Eurocrisis.

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Will Horwitz

Yesterday’s Evening Standard reported on the millionaire criminals given £200,000 in legal aid, continuing a tradition of newspaper reporting on footballers, business tycoons, and high-ranking police officers who are lucky enough to benefit from the often misunderstood ‘fourth pillar of the welfare state.’

Left unreported is the tragedy that Ken Clarke’s £350m per year cut to the system – to be debated at Report Stage in the Commons next week  – will leave high-profile cases like these untouched. Nor will it properly tackle the extortionate £124m spent each year administering the system. Instead it will deny 650,000 people on low incomes access to vital help with issues like benefit appeals, getting out of debt, keeping their job, or avoiding harassment by rogue landlords.

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Duncan Weldon

RPI inflation is at its highest since June 1991 and the level of unemployment is at its highest since October 1994.

These are shocking statistics. Sometimes it’s hard to remember we are nearly two years into the ‘recovery’ from recession.  For many people the current situation feels an awful lot worse than even the darkest days of September 2008:

• Whilst RPI is rising at 5.6%, regular pay is growing by only 1.6% and total pay (including bonuses) at 2.2% – either way this represents a huge squeeze on the earnings of those in work.
• Unemployment stands at over 2.5 million, up over 100,000 over the past year
• Household consumption has fallen for the past four quarters.
• The Chancellor now seems to hinting that benefits will not be uprated by inflation – a major blow to those already struggling to make ends meet after.
• Consumer confidence remains depressed.

This certainly doesn’t feel like a recovery for those in work or those out of it – incomes are falling, households are cutting back their spending and the economy hasn’t grown for nine months.

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Owen Tudor

Philip Inman writes on the Guardian economics blog that now might not be the right time for a Robin Hood Tax. Although it would be a good thing. And the money would be very good for the global poor. But, he suggests, there’s just too much going on in the politics of the finance sector. Later, maybe…. Here’s why Philip’s wrong.

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