Readers Question: What is the importance of bank lending to the UK economy? Bank lending plays an important role in influencing levels of consumer spending, investment and economic growth. When bank lending reduced at the start of the credit crunch in 2008 – this decline in bank lending was a significant factor in causing the …
Readers Question: In this era, Inflation had gotten really high specially in countries like Pakistan. Hows will the Inflation level go down ? or will it even let the country develop ? Inflation is one of the several problems that the Pakistan economy faces. The good news is that inflation has been falling in the …
A quick look at a comparison between the economies of Portugal and Spain, with the economies of the UK and US. Four countries with very different paths of unemployment.
Readers question: What will happen if the UK has its credit rating reduced from AAA to AA? Do you remember all those sub-prime mortgage bundles which caused the credit crisis? These mortgage bundles which later proved to be almost worthless were, for a considerable period, given a AAA credit rating by rating agencies. Even Greece, …
The ILO recently produced their growth and wages report for 2012/13. This suggested that across the developing world, labour markets are being characterised by falling real wages and a decline in labour’s share of national income. In particular: Real wage growth has been flat – even negative in the past few years. There is an …
Unfortunately, despite the post-Olympic bounce in GDP, other aspects of the UK economy look pretty grim. In manufacturing and industrial output, there has been no real recovery. In manufacturing it is not so much a triple dip recession – more a prolonged double dip. Manufacturing output is 2.1 per cent lower in October 2012 compared …
In the lead up to the Euro debt crisis, there was a marked divergence in competitiveness within the Eurozone. In fact, some economists suggested that the currency imbalances were the root cause of the Eurozone fiscal crisis. (VOX article) However, recent evidence suggests some restoration of competitiveness within the Eurozone. We can examine competitiveness in …
Readers Question: Can you tell what Portugal has done to reduce the Current Account GDP deficit so steeply? The reduction in the Portuguese deficit is quite striking. In researching the answer to this question, I came up with a different post – The Portuguese Economic crisis From what I can gather, essentially, the rapid reduction …