Economy
The inflation scare is overdone but watch out for the price spike
‘We are seeing very substantial inflation,’ the great investor Warren Buffett told shareholders in his master company Berkshire Hathaway at…
Money to burn
Consumers, not ministers, will lead the recovery
Spring at last – but who’d want to own a giant shopping mall?
Retail footfall will be the first measure of recovery this spring. Everywhere I look, from central London to small-town Yorkshire,…
Why the West should stop investing in China
The Prime Minister has called for an international coalition of free countries to oppose the growing influence of China’s authoritarian…
Will Covid cost less than expected?
It’s no surprise that the bill for Covid-19 keeps racking up. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s latest forecast predicts borrowing will…
Spacs and the City: if London won’t, Amsterdam will
This column generally takes a sceptical view of financial novelties and gimmicks. So my antennae have twitched in recent days…
Letters
Spinning plates Sir: Kate Andrews is right to highlight the looming risk of inflation (‘Rishi’s nightmare’, 6 March), but to…
Boris, Biden and the era of big government
Bill Clinton’s declaration that ‘the era of big government is over’ summed up the late 1990s political zeitgeist. Centre-left political…
The UK economy is suffering worse than most
Last week The Spectator highlighted new data from the OECD that offers a weekly update comparing a country’s current GDP…
Rishi’s nightmare
Fear of inflation is stalking the Treasury
The Covid recovery Budget
Barely a year has passed since Rishi Sunak’s first Budget. Its centrepiece was a £30 billion stimulus designed to calm…
Up Crash
The economy is tanking but stock markets are soaring. Why?
Is there any end to this tunnel?
We should talk about horizons, and the setting of desirable ones. A newspaper gave it a go the other day…
Rapid recovery means no negative rates – and a good time to buy a pub
It’s obvious from the body language of Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey that negative interest rates — much talked…
Amid the mayhem of today, an upbeat tale from 50 years ago
The online fashion retailer Boohoo is buying Debenhams without its stores and staff, confirming the demise of the high street.…
A salute to the ‘inessential’
A common sight across Britain these past ten months has been those rainbow flags fluttering in urban and village streets:…
Capital punishment
Why wealth taxes don’t work
The rise of the super pessimist
Covid isn’t the only thing to have developed a dangerous strain in the UK; pessimism has also mutated and is…
Barometer
Bad service Economic growth fell by 2.6% in November, the month of the second lockdown, compared with falls of 7.3%…
The long road to normality
The government’s most important economic policy is its vaccination programme. The speed at which people are immunised will determine when…
Why 2021 could be the year of economic Armageddon
The British economy is wrapped in bandages – we won’t know whether the wound has scabbed or turned septic until…
The magic money myth
There’s nothing new about ‘new monetary theory’
Ring out, wild bells
Save for those old enough to have lived through the second world war and its immediate austere aftermath, it would…
Barometer
Now and then Were households allowed to mix at Christmas during the plague? Samuel Pepys’s diary entry for 25 December…
Where is the Conservatives’ post-Brexit agenda?
What’s the point of Brexit? We are told it is to take back control, but that is a means to…
