Around 80% of publicly quoted shareholdings are now controlled by financial institutions, rather than the end shareholders. The traders acting for these institutions have quite different objectives from those of the ultimate shareholders. Members of a company pension scheme, for example, are likely to have a personal desire for the survival and longevity of their [...]

The Economist, an increasingly dogmatic apologist for the free market ideology, invited for its current issue, six academic economists to identify how they thought the financial crisis had changed the subject of economics. The answer is not a lot. So far as methods of teaching and research are concerned, nothing has changed, or is likely [...]

Vince Cable’s closing speech to the Lib-Dem’s first in-government conference has been greeted by City and business types as ‘intemperate’, as ‘emotional language’ and ‘playing to the gallery’. But he is surely right to suggest that good real economy businesses are being destroyed for the short term gain of City speculators and their ‘accomplices’ who [...]

The new rules on bank liquidity, now agreed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, will contribute to reducing banks’ risk-taking. But not a lot, and only slowly. Under pressure from the banks themselves, the rules have been softened and their implementation slowed down. Timidity in tightening requirements is justified on the grounds that too [...]

The forthcoming Oslo conference of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and International Labour Organisation (ILO) is to discuss ways of dealing with unemployment arising from the 2007-8 credit crunch. As noted elsewhere on this site, the question is one of emphasis between, on the one hand, repaying the public indebtedness which was rashly incurred [...]