In early 2009, when I got off a plane to begin an overseas posting in Washington, the city seemed to fizz with energy. The US was in recession but Barack Obama had just become president after a campaign which promised “hope and change”. I thought back to those days recently when Rachel Reeves, the UK
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Qin Gang charted a meteoric rise through the brutal world of elite Chinese politics, overtaking more experienced candidates to become Xi Jinping’s foreign minister in March before suddenly disappearing with little explanation. With Qin out of public view for a month, analysts, diplomats and officials are trying to make sense of his absence, which threatens
UK pay growth since the start of the pandemic has been strongest for top earners in London, leading to a widening of regional inequalities, according to analysis released on Tuesday by a leading think-tank. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that between February 2020 and May 2023 mean earnings for employees living in the UK
Traders work on the New York Stock Exchange floor. The benchmark S&P 500 closed 0.4% higher, while the tech-focused Nasdaq Composite recouped some losses © Brendan McDermid /Reuters US stocks and bond yields rose on Monday ahead of a busy week of central bank meetings and corporate earnings reports. Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 closed
Housebuilders have said that the UK government’s latest plan to boost the number of new dwellings in England is unlikely to help ministers reach their manifesto target on homes. Prime minister Rishi Sunak and levelling-up secretary Michael Gove on Monday insisted that the Conservative administration would meet its 2019 election pledge to “build at least
Credit Suisse has been fined $388mn by US and British regulators for “significant failures in risk management and governance” related to the collapse of Archegos Capital, which caused a $5.5bn trading loss and helped bring about the demise of the Swiss lender. The US Federal Reserve imposed a $269mn penalty on the bank for “unsafe
A top US banking regulator has accused some US lenders of misreporting deposit data at a time of industry tension over how deposit levels will be used to assess the cost of this year’s failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, in an open letter to bank chief executives
The writer is director of Public First Consultancy and senior visiting fellow at the London School of Economics Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s extension of the UK capital’s ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) was poorly designed and poorly timed. And the Labour party has paid the price — the policy cost them last week’s Uxbridge by-election.
Rishi Sunak has indicated he is ready to soften the government’s green policies, saying he did not want to “hassle” voters and that hitting the UK’s net zero carbon emissions target had to be done in a “proportionate” way. The prime minister insisted on Monday that “net zero is important to me” but made it
The writers are US secretary of state and US secretary of commerce Abraham Lincoln once observed: “In the world’s history, certain inventions and discoveries occurred of peculiar value . . . in facilitating all other inventions and discoveries.” Lincoln was speaking of the written word and, later, the printing press. But today, we are living through another such invention:
The euro slipped on Monday after data pointed to a slowing eurozone economy, ahead of a raft of major central bank policy decisions later in the week. The single market’s currency fell 0.4 per cent against the dollar to $1.109 after the region’s flash composite purchasing managers’ index, a measure of manufacturing and services activity
UK economic activity slowed sharply in July as rising interest rates hit consumer spending and a manufacturing downturn deepened, a closely watched survey has shown. The flash UK PMI services output index, a measure of activity in the sector, fell to a six-month low of 51.3, according to new data released on Monday. Meanwhile the
The eurozone’s downturn deepened at the start of the third quarter, according to a closely watched business survey that suggested the region’s economy is shrinking. The HCOB flash eurozone composite purchasing managers’ index, a measure of activity at companies across the 20-country bloc, fell to an eight-month low after a sharper than expected slowdown in
Ramón Menéndez Pidal, a distinguished 20th-century Spanish historian, once observed: “In Spain, difference of opinion degenerates into a contest of irreconcilable animosity.” So it proved in the divisive election campaign that culminated on Sunday in an inconclusive result that leaves no clear path to government for any party. Important issues such as the health of
Switzerland’s second-biggest bank, Julius Baer, said it pulled in more than SFr9.2bn ($10.6bn) in new money from clients following the near-collapse of rival Credit Suisse and its takeover by UBS in March — a trend it expects to continue in the coming months. Despite turbulent markets and clients cutting back on borrowing in their portfolios,
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s warnings that conservatives and hard-right nationalists would drag Spain backwards were far from original in the lexicon of political campaigns. But in the weeks leading up to Sunday’s vote, the conservative opposition People’s party and the radicals of Vox provided real-life examples in local government of how they would handle coalitions.
On June 24, eight Chinese fighters flew across the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan’s air force scrambled their jets in response, as they do almost every day. But this time, the People’s Liberation Army aircraft flew closer than they have before: right up to what is known as Taiwan’s contiguous zone, a buffer area just 12 nautical
The writer is chief executive of the New America think-tank and an FT contributing editor In the age of AI, all the world’s a classroom/ And teachers are the guides to lead the way; With knowledge at the students’ fingertips/ Teachers help them find and use it every day. ChatGPT wrote that adaptation of one
Tenants are stuck in a financial “pain point” as rates peak in the UK, senior bankers privately admit. Evidence of this may emerge in half-year financial results from high-street lenders this week. But the pain has already started for one acquaintance. Dan, a 23-year-old fan of poetry and punk rock, is attempting the tricky alchemy
UK regulators have ended a three-year investigation into the former boss of NMC Health, the FTSE 100 company that collapsed in 2020 after an alleged multibillion-dollar fraud. The Financial Conduct Authority has shelved its previously undisclosed probe into the hospital operator’s former chief executive Prasanth Manghat, according to people familiar with the matter and a
The writer is a former chair of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and a senior fellow at the Center for Financial Stability The US Federal Reserve should feel vindicated in its decision to pause rate rises at its policy-setting meeting last month. Alas, it seems poised to raise them again. Forgive the cliché, but