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Edmund Conway

Cyprus on the brink

It’s an unfamiliar feeling these days, travelling to a country with capital controls – or the threat of them slamming down any moment. You bring more cash than usual because the ATMs don’t all work, but you can’t take too much or you might not be allowed to

Cyprus: good news for the fight against tax avoidance

I’ve been conducting a thought experiment to come up with a clear-cut positive by-product of the mess in Cyprus, and I think I may have found one. What’s happening on that benighted island right now may represent more of a step forward in the fight against tax havens

The majority of Government spending is now uncontrolled

2013 may well go down as an extraordinary year for many reasons – to take one of them, it looks like being the first time we’ve had capital controls imposed not merely in the single market but in the eurozone (more on which later) – and it also represents a landmark

Help to Buy: it's not only dangerous, it also misses the point

Listening again to George Osborne’s interview on the Today Programme yesterday [http://audioboo.fm/boos/1281356-george-osborne-many-more-social-homes-not-solution-to-housing-problem] I was struck by one thing he said to Evan Davis: essentially that the large part of the rationale for Help to Buy scheme was that the deposits being asked of homebuyers these

George Osborne gambles on a nation of homeowners

There’s been rather a lot of fuss this morning about the Chancellor’s new Help to Buy scheme [http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/10012.htm]– largely revolving around whether it will help guarantee buy-to-let mortgages and those for second homes. While these questions are undoubtedly interesting (the answer, so

What's the point of the Bank of England's new remit?

On the face of it one thing that’s certainly significant about this Budget is George Osborne’s decision to refresh the remit for the Bank of England. This is, in many senses, an historic moment. Just consider the two times the Bank’s remit was overhauled in the modern

The new Bank of England remit

Here’s the new Bank of England remit: Letter from the Chancellor to the Governor of the Bank of England and mo… [/content/images/wordpress/2013/03/Letter-from-the-Chancellor-to-the-Governor-of-the-Bank-of-England-and-mo....pdf] And if you want to compare it with the existing (1997) remit, that one can be found here [pdf] [http://www.