Biography:
About: Economics Editor of The Sunday Times since 1989; also its assistant editor, policy adviser and chief leader-writer, and maintains his own economics blog, Economics UK
Education: Universities of Wales, Oxford and London
Career: Lloyds Bank; the Henley Centre for Forecasting; Now! Magazine; Financial Weekly; The Times
Current position/role: The Sunday Times: Economics editor, assistant editor and policy adviser
- also writes/written for: Monthly columns for Professional Investor, British Industry and The Manufacturer and regular contributor to the CBI's Business Voice
Other roles/Main role:
Other activities:
Disclosures:
Viewpoints/Insight:
Broadcast media: Regular broadcasts
Video:
Controversy/Criticism:
Awards/Honours: Harold Wincott Award for Senior Financial Journalist of the Year, 2004; British Press Awards - Highly Commended Feature Writer of the Year, 2008; British Press Awards - Shortlisted in Finance/Business Category, 2007
Scoops:
Other:
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Articles:
- Britain receives the wrong kind of easing - We need credit easing, not quantitative easing. The Bank of England should be buying bundles of small business loans on behalf of the Treasury - 9th October 2011
- Osborne seeks solace down memory lane - Margaret Thatcher’s budget of 1981 is still playing an important role in the fiscal thinking of the current chancellor George Osborne - 2nd October 2011
- Pick a pump that will rescue the recovery - I shall continue to stand, Canute-like, against the rush to more easing. It is less a magic bullet than a tool to inflate your way out of trouble - 25th September 2011
- Scramble under way to rev up the recovery - I do not want to reprise my misery index piece, but it is clear that if we were miserable then, heaven knows we are even more miserable now - 18th September 2011
- A painless way to rebuild our recovery - The government should divert spending on services to infrastructure instead. The fiscal multipliers are at least three times higher - 11th September 2011
- Long hard slog leaves consumers wilting - People are struggling, but accept that an artificial monetary stimulus, like an artificial fiscal stimulus, would not solve anything - 4th September 2011
- United it stands, divided Europe will fall - After the chaos of early August, relative calm has descended on the markets, but the eurozone remains the biggest single threat to global recovery - 28th August 2011
- Misery index explains why we’re all so glum - The key indicator of economic discontent is at a 17-year low, which is why the overall picture for Britain remains so dark - 21st August 2011
- Misery index explains why we’re all so glum - The key indicator of economic discontent is at a 17-year low, which is why the overall picture for Britain remains so dark - 21st August 2011
- Osborne can’t risk rating on futile Vat cut - A loss of the AAA rating would have an immediate and damaging impact on those parts of the banking system that are owned by the government - 14th August 2011
- We keep on working but we’ve lost our mojo - The latest GDP figures were not as bad as they could have been, but weak productivity is a big worry — especially in services - 31st July 2011
- Osborne battles to conquer debt mountain - Growth is disappointing. It would have been a small price for getting the deficit down, but that is not happening - 24th July 2011
- Please sir, can we have some more lending? - Britain’s problem is not too little public spending, but too little bank lending to smaller businesses. There is proof that this is systemic - 17th July 2011
- How Britain can grow old without going bust - Of all the pressures on the public finances in the coming decades, easily the most important relate to demographics - 10th July 2011
- Bank failure leads to squeeze on your wallet - The falls in real incomes are a failure of policy — and the Bank of England shares responsibility for that with the government - 3rd July 2011
- Cut tax to make UK a magnet for the world - The government’s planned reduction of corporation tax to 23% is welcome but hardly revolutionary, merely bringing it down to the EU average - 26th June 2011
- Fears grow but global locomotive won’t stop - The world economy has lost momentum, with even China and India losing steam — but most of this is because of temporary factors - 19th June 2011
- A real Plan B would end the credit drought - The government's banking experts must come up with a plan to get credit flowing at a pace that will sustain a decent economic recovery - 12th June 2011
- Britain would benefit from a sterling boost - The main reason we need a stronger pound is to help control inflation and limit the extent that interest rates will need to rise to do so - 5th June 2011
- Is Osborne cutting too hard, or not enough? - If high inflation persists there may be a case for revisiting the cash totals for public spending, to prevent the squeeze from being even tougher - 29th May 2011
- Consumers condemn Britain to slow lane - This week's gloomy forecasts from the Bank of England were expected, but Mervyn King's hawkish line on inflation was more of a suprise - 15th May 2011
- Euro needs more than sticking plaster rescues - The eurozone is looking unappealing and battered. Parts are held together only with artificial support. Where does it go from here? - 8th May 2011
- Punch and Judy show clouds debate on cuts - In the debate over fiscal policy, economists are sowing confusion, rather than giving the public clear guidance on the government's actions - 2nd May 2011
- The tricky challenge of rebalancing Britain - Too large much of Britain's GDP is driven by consumer and government spending, and not enough by exports and investment - 24th April 2011
- Rare outbreak of cheer eases the rate pressure - After a gloomy start to the year things could be looking up, thanks to rising employment rates, a falling trade deficit and a dip in inflation - 17th April 2011
- Light of recovery shines through gloom - Despite fears, global economic growth is gathering momentum. It is slow, and occasionally unsteady, but it is a recovery - 10th April 2011
- How much should we mind the output gap? - How will we know whether the output gap is big enough to justify the government’s fiscal plans? Only by watching what happens - 10th April 2011
- High inflation threatens Osborne’s growth plan - The Chancellor’s difficult second budget has been fairly well received, but we can't be complacent and lose our position in the global market - 27th March 2011
- Osborne need not slip on soaring oil prices - The toxicity of oil has been highlighted by recent uprisings, and the chancellor will be balancing votes and income in his upcoming budget - 20th March 2011
- Keep a lid on pay and we may escape misery - Ordinary wages are failing to match the growth in inflation. But if we keep a lid on pay we may be able to escape the miserable state we're in - 20th February 2011
- Rising tide of imports hits export-led recovery - Britain’s trade position has taken a turn for the worse. The great rebalancing of the economy is not happening - 13th February 2011
- Pressure for rate rises as inflation hits home - Reports of the recovery’s death appear to have been greatly exaggerated, with three key sectors bouncing back after a weather-hit December - 6th February 2011
- Winter woes leave us with a steeper climb - The economy is 4.4% smaller than before the recession. The climb back up gets a lot harder if you lose your footing in the snow - 30th January 2011
- Raising rates won’t save the Bank’s reputation - Anything the Bank of England does now would be regarded as a belated response to an inflation problem it failed to predict - 23rd January 2011
- Can Asia keep pulling the world to recovery? - In the late 1980s there was talk of Japan overtaking America — then its bubble economy burst. Could a similar fate befall China? - 16th January 2011
- Low interest rates fail to crank up bank lending - Despite rising inflation, an upward nudge of the 0.5% Bank rate remains unlikely as banks pay off their debts rather than lend - 9th January 2011
- At the crossroads of inflation and growth - Inflation will be a headache for the Bank, but the rise in private investment is encouraging. Will King be forced to raise rates sharply? - 2nd January 2011
- Forecasters failed to spot inflation surge - The British economy performed better than many expected it to this year. David Smith looks at which pundits got it right - 26th December 2010
- Bank break-up talk may scupper lending revival - The three worries for 2011 are: the eurozone derailing a recovery, spending cuts and banks' inability to support the economy - 19th December 2010
- Rich countries pump up inflation for the poor - In many emerging economies the problem is inflation rather than deflation, while in Britain the problem will get worse before it gets better - 12th December 2010
- Hold down the pound to help the recovery - As manufacturing leads the economy out of recession, the pound’s under-valuation against the euro must be maintained - 4th December 2010
- Nation of shoppers finds new ways of growing - Exports and investment are starting to replace consumer and government spending as the drivers of economic growth in Britain - 28th November 2010
- How to keep euro jigsaw from falling apart - Germany has to ease up to make the euro work, otherwise it — and not Ireland, Greece or Spain — will cause a break-up - 21st November 2010
- Bank has the power to turn on lending taps - To ease an ongoing credit crunch, the Bank of England should extend the period over which official support for banks is withdrawn - 14th November 2010
- Could there be another minor miracle on jobs? - The recession was deeper than its predecessors but employment has held up well. Could the private sector now offset public job cuts? - 7th November 2010
- Cuts will sober up an unbalanced economy - Balancing the government’s books and balancing trade should be part of the same story. Conditions are in place for just that - 24th October 2010
- Osborne’s best chance to put a lid on our debt - After the cuts are announced, some will say the government has gone too far, while others will be clamouring for even bigger spending cuts - 17th October 2010
- Companies will also be hammered by the cuts - Not only do firms have to create jobs to offset government cuts, they also have to prepare for their own setbacks in spending review - 10th October 2010
- No. We are not turning into the Japanese - Japan teaches us to introduce quantative easing and not raise rates which would tighten monetary policy prematurely - 3rd October 2010
- Housing destined to be stuck in the mud - Even though property prices are recovering, volumes are much more important — and they remain very low, to the detriment of the economy - 26th September 2010
- Making the case for a rise in interest rates - Inflation has been above 2% for more than 75% of the months since 2005. More than a dip is needed to ensure the Bank’s credibility - 19th September 2010
- No alternative to the bitter pills on spending - There is no alternative to the bitter pills on spending, no matter how much Ed Balls insists that there is no crisis in our public finances - 11th September 2010
- Big picture shows that the recovery is intact - The markets are confused as recent data that has emerged paints a conflicting picture of the world’s economic recovery - 5th September 2010
- Don’t expect a return to the golden age - The period of moderation up to 2007 was exceptional. Public finances should be robust enough to withstand the next downturn - 15th August 2010
- Bloodcurdling talk does more damage than cuts - Ministers should stop exaggerating austerity measures. It dents consumer confidence, which could restrict the recovery - 8th August 2010
- Bank fuels anxiety on recovery - A double whammy of weaker growth and higher inflation, forecast by the Bank of England, is set to shake the markets - 8th August 2010
- Too many cooks will spoil monetary broth - The chancellor is no longer in charge. We now have economic policy by committee — and three committees, no less - 1st August 2010
- Growth leaps but it’s a creditless recovery - It is not entirely clear how growth can be so strong — gross domestic product rose 1.1% in the second quarter — with lending so weak - 25th July 2010
- Private sector can create the 2m jobs that we need - It is in Britain's swiftly recovering private sector that the jobs will be found to prevent widespread unemployment - 18th July 2010
- Lord, break up the euro, but not just yet - Logic says the euro cannot survive with its current membership intact. But this would be a bad time for anybody to leave - 11th July 2010
- Plenty to worry about but not a double dip - Economies across the world remain in a state of turmoil, but the hard facts suggest a double-dip recession remains highly unlikely - 4th July 2010
- Like magic, real deficit is revealed - For the first time the official forecast for Britain’s economy will be produced by an independent body, the Office of Budget Responsibility - 13th June 2010
- The world’s glass is more than half full - Financial conditions in Britain are conducive to recovery. We should try to ensure they stay that way, at least for a while - 30th May 2010
- Vat rise would be one more headache for the Bank - The Office for Budget Responsibility will take a reasonable view of what the economy needs - but will it include 20% Vat? - 23rd May 2010
- Digging our way out the hard way -in an era of tax rises, Cutting the deficit will involve harder decisions than putting together a coalition agreement - 16th May 2010
- Can anyone survive the deficit poisoned chalice? - The danger of the election result is that nobody will have the guts to tackle Britain's £163b black hole - 9th May 2010
- Darling’s error leaves us all fearing the hangover - Everybody knows we face a post-election hangover, but for most people it doesn’t feel that way - 2nd May 2010
- Recovery mountain not as steep - Britain's predicted 1.3% growth this year is comfortably better than the eurozone and the average for advanced economies - 25th April 2010
- Sick man of Europe springs back into life - The flexibility that stood Britain in good stead before the crisis will still be an advantage as the economy moves out of it - 11th April 2010
- Osborne let to make monkey of voters - Something strange has been happening, Tories made an announcement that sounded like a softening of the party’s fiscal stance - 4th April 2010
- Fiscal fog lifts but axe has to fall - If things continue to head in the direction of recent months, a resolution is in sight to the nightmare of Britain’s public finances - 28th March 2010
- ‘Do no harm’ should be Darling’s motto - Politics is not grown up enough for the Chancellor to set out in detail the spending cuts needed in the review that follows the election - 21st March 2010
- Our exports may be cheap, but Europe is not buying - In the distant past, the monthly trade figures were regarded as the single most important barometer of the country’s health - 14th March 2010
- Election woes are vote against Brown - The markets continue to believe a Labour victory, particularly a minority Labour government, would be very bad for Britain - 7th March 2010
- Don’t mess around with inflation targets - Inflation-targeting, while far from flawless, has been the most effective model for UK monetary policy in modern times - 28th February 2010
- Recession’s ruins hide spare capacity - What does an economic wrecking ball look like? If you know, and can put a number on it, the BoE would love to hear from you - 14th February 2010
- Sharpening the knives to avoid a Greek tragedy - Tackling the deficit is one political priority. Getting growth going is another. Balancing the two will be tricky - 7th February 2010
- Lending is the cloud on the recovery’s horizon - The banks have their own debt hangover to deal with. One way they are doing so is by not lending enough into the economy - 31st January 2010
- Jobs joy takes sting out of inflation misery - One door opens, another slams shut. Just as news on unemployment is getting better, inflation takes a turn for the worse - 24th January 2010
- If exports don’t bounce neither will the economy - It is the big question after any recession. Where will the growth come from? The answer has to be from exports - 17th January 2010
- Tax at 50% is a good way to kill the golden goose - Heaven knows what tricks Darling will be required to perform as polling day approaches. Just say no, Alistair - 10th January 2010
- Decade will tip economy to the east - The world economy is recovering but is heavily skewed towards emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil - 3rd January 2010
- A record breaking year - for all the wrong reasons - The biggest annual slide in the economy since the 1930s caught forecasters by surprise. We review their predictions - 27th December 2009
- This year could have been a lot worse - Anything could have happened to the banking system, an even worse crisis was averted, for which credit is due to authorities - 20th December 2009
- The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Darling - Perhaps the real Chancellor got lost somewhere in Downing Street, diverted by a lot of Brown and a load of Balls - 13th December 2009
- Alistair Darling’s balancing act: cut deficit or win votes - Will the markets be convinced by Alistair Darling's commitment to reduce Britain’s enormous budget deficit? - 6th December 2009
- Don’t expect much blood from Darling's axe - Anybody expecting the chancellor to issue bloodcurdling warnings of how much pain is on the way, will be disappointed - 29th November 2009
- The nutters can relax – but only for a while - Abbott and Posen have different definitions of inflation nutters. Not everybody who worries about inflation meets the description - 22nd November 2009
- Bank says let’ s party like it’s 1994 again - How can we square the Bank of England’s upbeat forecast with governor’s relentlessly downbeat tone in presenting it? - 15th November 2009
- Are the central banks blowing new bubbles? - The combination of near-zero rates, a weak dollar and the willingness of the authorities to support every market in sight is dangerous - 8th November 2009
- Bank should prime pump for another £30bn - The Bank has done £175bn of quantitative easing, and it has helped. But it's too early to ease off the accelerator just yet - 1st November 2009
- Deficit may undershoot despite GDP setback - Time and again in this recession, the ONS has come up with gloomier gross domestic product numbers than anybody expected - 25th October 2009
- Job market lift will keep unemployed below 3m - It should have been an easy tap-in, but the formal end of the recession has turned into a cliff-hanger - 18th October 2009
- Tax and spending squeeze will keep Bank rate low - Now the party conferences are over, do we know about how the budget deficit will be tackled? - 11th October 2009
- It’s time for Osborne to lift the Tory veil - There is a good chance Tories will form the next government, so there is added pressure to explain their economic policy - 4th October 2009
- We are still a nation of shoppers, not squirrels - Will we be spenders or savers? It is a big question for the economy, and for those relying on consumer demand - 27th September 2009
- Job market must be as flexible on the way up - Unemployment up, wages down, or at least slowing to a record low. It is the story of Britain’s labour market now - 20th September 2009
- Lord Myners talks about his City role - In an interview with The Sunday Times, the City minister says taxpayers will make money from the government’s banking rescue - 13th September 2009
- Blame bankers and regulators, not the market - My view of markets is like Churchill’s view of democracy: their faults may be many but they beat the alternatives by far - 6th September 2009
- Recovery surprises leave markets floating on air - One thing we have learnt during this crisis is that markets are skittish, and hugely influenced by confidence and mood - 30th August 2009
- Bank’s easing clips the wings of rising pound - As Oscar Wilde might have said, to mislead once is a misfortune, to do so twice smacks of carelessness - 9th August 2009
- Young are hit hardest as jobs take a dive - Nearly a fifth of 18 to 24-year-olds in Britain are out of work, part of a 5m army of young unemployed across the European Union - 2nd August 2009
- Vat will surely rise to fill the Treasury hole - What will the inevitable tax rises that will accompany the cut on public spending mean for economy? - 26th July 2009
- Banks may be too weak to support the recovery - While business would like them to be going a lot faster, a gentle jog is all they can manage - 19th July 2009
- Economic outlook: Tear up the rulebook, it's all about borrowing - Luxury of deciding what to do about excessive lending will come later. But it is a new era - 12th July 2009
- Honda effect suggests recession dive is over - Honda supplied customers from stock, suspending production at its Swindon factory. Last month it restarted, and it is not alone - 5th July 2009
- Road ahead is uncertain as talks turn to recovery - Optimism that the worst of the recession is over is giving way to uncertainty about what shape the recovery might take - 28th June 2009
- Tories must tackle public-sector blight - The Conservatives need to go further in reforming the public sector than merely relying on eyewateringly tight budgets - 14th June 2009
- The lending tap won't open for some time - With so much going on in politics, the economy has benefited from being out of the spotlight, with sterling rallying significantly - 7th June 2009
- There is no easy way out of the debt maze - Inflation and government debt are related. Some fear the government will seek to inflate its way out of its problems - 24th May 2009
- British consumers: down but not out - My sense is that the Bank of England, given a "glass half-full or glass half-empty" choice, had no incentive to be upbeat - 17th May 2009
- After the fall, how steep is the climb? - What kind of upturn can we expect when this is over — vigorous or insipid? - 10th May 2009
- Light at the end of the tunnel - After a huge rush of events things have gone a bit quiet. It could be that nothing is happening, which would be worrying - 3rd May 2009
- Radical surgery still needed – and it is going to hurt - You should play the ball not the man. Attacking Alistair Darling does not come easy, even for hard-hearted commentators - 26th April 2009
- Darling tries to climb out of a hole - With the economy is in deep recession, the Chancellor has as much room for manoeuvre as an elephant in a Mini - 19th April 2009
- Spending needed for Ireland’s plight - Raising Vat was the first thing Howe did on entering the Treasury in 1979. Do you ever feel history might be repeating itself? - 12th April 2009
- G20 gives us less reason to wallow in the gloom - Brown would have found it harder to exercise his authority if Britain really was the sick man of the global economy - 5th April 2009
- Exporters sink as world trade slumps - Leaders of countries representing 85% of the world economy should make a firm stand against protectionism, and mean it - 29th March 2009
- Revolving door spins faster for unemployed - It is tempting to think there are no jobs around and that once you get handed the redundancy letter you might as well give up - 22nd March 2009
- Bank will need to act fast on inflation - The general feeling is that beyond the valley of temporarily falling prices lie the jagged peaks of a nasty inflation problem - 15th March 2009
- Bank injection means we are all monetarists now - None of us has seen rates this low. When the storm passes, we may never see them as low again - 8th March 2009
- Not everybody gets skittled by recession - Some parts of the economy are relatively recession-proof, and others will emerge not just standing but stronger - 1st March 2009
- In deep, what will bring us back to life? - Economics has not covered itself with glory in predicting the situation we find ourselves in. The bankers' and economists' models did not work - 15th February 2009
- Is the UK consumer really flat on his back? - One of the stories of 2009 will be that consumers can buy cheaply, if they choose to, and not just at the discounters - 8th February 2009
- Davos can’t pump up this economy - A disparaging view of Davos would be that if hot air alone could reflate the global economy things would be looking up quite soon - 1st February 2009
- Britain is not Iceland. Is EU the next Japan? - If there was a currency I would be worried about at the moment, however, it would be the euro - 25th January 2009
- Scanning the horizon for an exit strategy - Assuming near-zero rates are not normal, how do you get back to normal without stifling the recovery? - 18th January 2009
- Tories out of step with Bank - A Tory shadow chancellor should be well regarded by the City. Instead, Alistair Darling is winning grudging approval - 11th January 2009
- Two monsters battle to settle our future - Lovers of Hollywood B movies will recognise that the battle between King Kong and Godzilla will determine the outcome for 2009 - 4th January 2009
- Chaos of 2008 causes havoc for predictions - There were a number of ways the crisis could have played out. The route it ended up taking was close to the worst - 28th December 2008
- Stuck in reverse despite Bank’s cuts - Government intervention and support, for three decades regarded as off limits, has made an extraordinary come-back - 21st December 2008
- Wrong time to reach for euro lifeline - Britain tends to turn to Europe at times of trouble, with disastrous consequences - 14th December 2008
- Crude’s collapse oiled the wheels - The more the financial crisis dragged on, the more oil bulls became certain the price of crude would continue to rise. That seemed illogical to me - 7th December 2008
- Only spending cuts will get us out of this black hole - The Treasury and independent experts debate whether filling a "black hole" in the government’s projections needs a few billion of tax rises - 30th November 2008
- Darling risks drowning in a sea of red ink - Tomorrow it will be hard to put a cigarette paper between Brown and Darling - 23rd November 2008
- Why Darling needs to do more about inheritance tax - With the average detached home in the southeast still worth about £400,000 according to Halifax, you only need about £200,000 in savings and investments before your heirs will have to pay tax at 40% - 23rd November 2008
- UK on ropes as Bank throws in the towel - Gordon Brown is making political hay out of the crisis but he is not carrying the Bank with him. For years central-bank independence was his proudest achievement as chancellor. Now I get people asking whether it was such a good idea after all - 16th November 2008
- No time for wimps as history boys take over - The Bank has to cut more aggressively now to get the same effect as it did two years ago - 9th November 2008
- Lending window is shut but rate cuts will help - 2nd November 2008
- Small recessions hurt, but big ones are scary - 26th October 2008
- Bank rescue won't stop the misery index rising - 19th October 2008
- Time for a bold cut in interest rates - The days when a deft touch on the tiller by the Bank of England sent powerful shockwaves through the economy are long gone - 5th October 2008
- If this is the bust, why wasn’t it preceded by a bigger economic boom? - 28th September 2008
- The party is over for shrinking City - 21st September 2008
- Inflation is poised to peak and then slide - 14th September 2008
- Sterling pounding but not a bloodbath - The tide has gone out on sterling and, to paraphrase Warren Buffett, it does not appear to have been wearing any bathing trunks - 7th September 2008
- Bank should slip off inflation shackles - There is no doubt that many sectors of the economy could do with the tonic of an interest-rate cut, but how could it be justified? - 31st August 2008
- Labour wilts as battle over economy looms - 24th August 2008
- A bed of nails we all have to lie on - Economies generally obey the bicycle theory - if they are not moving forward they are at risk of falling over - 16th August 2008
- Can the economy grow even if consumers wilt? - The fall in the oil price from farcical to merely ridiculous levels, with other commodity prices easing in tandem, is good news - 27th July 2008
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