The Eastern European Boom When Will Polish Economy Overtake UK and France?Watch this video on YouTube Whilst Western Europe struggles with low growth, Eastern Europe is booming. In the past two decades, Eastern Europe has quietly witnessed an economic transformation, with growth in living standards outperforming the West. Estonia, Poland and Romania have all seen …
In the 1970s Venezuela was widely admired for its functional democracy and the highest living standards in Latin America. There was good reasons to be optimistic. Venezuela has the largest known reserves of oil in the world. Greater than Saudi Arabia, Iran and the US. Yet in recent decades, the economy has lurched from crisis …
Greece is the cradle of western civilisation. Philosophy, democracy and unique cultural icons. But, 15 years ago, something terrible started to happen to the Greek economy, which saw one of the biggests hits to living standards in the western world. GDP collapsed, unemployment soared and Greece became an economic basket case. This article explains what …
1970s – The Decade That Nearly BROKE BritainWatch this video on YouTube Readers Question I’m currently looking at stagflation in the mid-1970s in the UK, and the policies the then-Government undertook to solve the economic crisis. Was the Government right to widen the budget deficit 1974-5 in order to stimulate demand, or should it have …
In 1978, the Conservative Party hit on a fantastic election poster, Labour’s not working. Unemployment had recently hit 1.6 million or 5%. Ironically, a few years later unemployment would soon double to over 12% after the devastating early 1980s recession. But, what about 2024, is there a new epidemic of economic inactivity, people not working? …
In 1984, Arthur Scargill passionately spoke to 140,000 miners to fight for their jobs, communities and livelihoods. Coal was the black gold which kept the country going. Coal miners were the working class heroes, with the capacity to bring down a government or fuel the engine of the economy. After descending a coal mine in …
The country of revolution, protest and long holidays is going through another economic crisis, debt is rising – and dissatisfaction has hit an all-time high. In the past 20 years, growth in France has slipped behind similar countries, reflecting long-term economic problems, but it is the past two years of inflation and stagnant real wages …
Home repossession – when banks take homes back into their own ownership, Mortgage arrears – when mortgage holders fall behind in their mortgage payments, but not necessarily leading to repossession Home reposessions reached a peak in 1991 with 75,000. This was an era of interest rates of 15%. At a time when most people had …