Comment, analysis and other offerings from Monday’s FT,
Richard Lambert: Britain’s Budget has no room for big bucks
The director-general of the CBI employers’ federation writes: the UK’s public finances are now on an unsustainable path. As it climbs up the international league table in terms of the sheer scale of its public sector, the time has come for a serious debate about the size and role of the state.
Lucy Kellaway: safe revenge on the boss
In the UK, we do it with a brick thrown through the boss’s window. In France, with a key that locks a boss into his office. And in the US, they do it by lampooning the boss on Twitter. Workers of the world are uniting, not so much to lose their chains but to get back at their bosses
Comment: Martin Feldstein on US inflation/deflation
The US last week showed its first signs of deflation for 55 years, prompting inevitable fears of further deflation in the future, writes Feldstein, professor of economics at Harvard and president emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research. However, the unprecedented explosion of the US fiscal deficit raises the spectre of high future inflation.
Analysis: Steeled for stress tests
For US banks, it is shaping up as something akin to a giant system-wide rights issue. But, asks the FT’s Krishna Guha, are Washington’s ‘stress tests’ of the banking system rigorous enough? And are they part of what some prominent economists call a scam designed to funnel large taxpayer subsidies to banks?
Lex: UK’s ‘sick man’ budget
The Budget that Alistair Darling presents on Wednesday will reveal the UK for what it is — a contender, once again, for the sick man of Europe tag it managed to shed 30 years ago.
Lina Saigol: Greasing the wheels of M&A
Shares in Barclays rose 7 per cent on its sale of iShares – its exchange-traded fund unit – to CVC Capital Partners. That alone should encourage other companies to take a hard look at the structure of their businesses and dispose of anything they will not miss when the upturn comes.
FTfm: Funds need radical change
Fund management groups will need to radically revise their business models in order to retain clients after the traumatic events of the past 18 months, writes FTfm’s Steve Johnson.
Interactive: Conversations on the credit crunch
In this series of exclusive video interviews, the Financial Times talks to key protagonists of the credit crunch – bankers, policymakers, financiers – and asks them to explain not just what happened, but also how they think finance will adapt to the post-crash world.
Tony Jackson: False dawns threaten to blind economic forecasters
It seems fair to assume that those who were wrong going into this crisis are no more likely to get it right today. So strike out the economists, who – with honourable exceptions – were far too sanguine before. Strike out, too, the great bulk of those offering guidance on house prices, company profits, credit ratings and the rest.