Private equity: we told you so!
Fears are now growing that many private equity (PE) takeovers will go bust. Almost none of the conditions needed for the kind of takeovers that unions were most worried about are now in play:
Nigel Stanley's Articles
Last of the ex-building societies
The Government’s decisive intervention to nationalise Bradford and Bingley is welcome. It contrasts with their dithering about Northern Rock. Then they seemed more worried about breaching the new Labour commandments against nationalisation than doing what everyone else could see was both inevitable and about as far removed from 1945-style nationalisation as possible.
the left and the financial crisis
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…
What will the financial crisis mean for politics?
We do not yet know how much the financial crisis will destabilise the ‘real’ economy where most people live and work, (usually in complete ignorance of what the recipients of big City bonuses actually do), but there is no doubt that we are in for a rough ride.
Lib Dem tax policy – just a bit too clever?
The main issue at this year’s Lib Dem conference, from which I have just returned, has been their new tax policy (set out in a speech earlier in the year by Nick Clegg here). In many ways it captures the difficulties the party faces in these changed political times.
The CBI’s rose-tinted specs
The CBI cannily time their annual labour market survey to the opening day of the TUC congress. Sometimes it’s what we in the communications trade call a spoiler – an attempt to muscle in on the natural media attention paid to the TUC (and of course sometimes the TUC does the same with the annual…
Job insecurity is a problem
Stumbling and Mumbling is an economics blog that is always worth reading. Even when you disagree, it makes you check your own position. But his take on the TUC’s job security poll is a bit off the mark. He says “this survey is no evidence whatsoever of an impending economic downturn” But that is not what…
Welcome to the ToUChstone blog
Welcome to the ToUChstone blog. This is an informal blog by TUC staff about policy issues that are in the news, or that ought to be.