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Edmund Conway

Downgrades: an observation

Since Britain’s sovereign debt rating was downgraded from AAA by Moody’s a couple of months ago, the UK’s cost of borrowing (as measured on its 10-year bonds) has fallen from 2.1% to just below 1.7%. That’s a 19.5% fall in borrowing costs. You

The IMF vs George Osborne - the inside story

A few weeks ago, eagle-eyed Twitter users would have noticed a rather unusual tweet [https://twitter.com/Lagarde/status/320201479317233664] from one household name to another. “Welcome to Twitter @George_Osborne [http://www.twitter.com/George_Osborne],” read the public message from @Lagarde [http://www.twitter.com/lagarde], “see you

Blanchard: UK economic policy is "playing with fire"

[https://i1.wp.com/www.edmundconway.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/137652604-1-522x293.jpg?ssl=1] The International Monetary Fund’s chief economist has warned George Osborne that he is “playing with fire” with his fiscal policy. In an interview with Sky News, Olivier Blanchard also said that the Chancellor should

Coming next year: The Summit

Coming next year: The Summit

[https://i0.wp.com/www.edmundconway.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/bretton.jpg?ssl=1] Today I can finally talk publicly [http://www.thebookseller.com/news/lb-buys-bretton-woods-book.html]about a project I’ve been working on for the past three years. Next summer, Little, Brown will publish my book about

David Miles on the economy, QE, banks and Help to Buy

If you were asked to pick three of the main economic talking points of the present day, you might reasonably choose the following: the threat of recession; the question of how to cleanse the banks and the issue of how to sort out the housing market. [https://i0.wp.com/

Thatcher and North Sea oil

There has been much talk this morning about how much of the economic success of the Thatcher years was due to North Sea oil. Rather than write a whole new blog about this, here is a column I wrote about it in the Telegraph back in 2009 [http://www.telegraph.

Margaret Thatcher: the economic legacy

Baroness Thatcher wasn’t a great fan of statistics. She tended to treat them with the same kind of disdain she usually reserved for economists, who spent most of her time in office telling her she was wrong. So it is probably fair to say she wouldn’t much have