Blog

Tim Geithner: The Forrest Gump of World Finance

One almost feels sorry for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.He’s a punchline in his own country because he oversees the IRS even though he conveniently forgot to declare $80,000 of income (and managed to get away with punishment that wouldn’t even qualify as a slap on the wrist).Now he’s becoming a a ...

Twitter in Ireland

Lewis James Brown, Web 2.0 Manager at the Centre for Policy Studies, takes a look at the impact of technology companies' rush to choose Ireland as a base of operations, and what the UK can do to stay competitive.Some will have noticed yesterday the announcement that Twitter has chosen Ireland’s ...

The ECB outlined when fiscal consolidation will be effective. Have the Euro politicians read their work?

Yesterday, Ed Balls apologised. He apologised for Polish immigration and for the regulation (or lack of) of the banking sector, and promised to enforce fiscal rules to ensure that the Labour party can reclaim economic credibility in any future Government. Whilst the admission of these policy failures is welcome, the one ...

What's being said at the IMF/World Bank Meeting

'Europe is bankrupt', says the governor of one leading central bank in the southern hemisphere, who I talked with at this year's World Bank/IMF Annual meeting here in Washington DC. The eurozone's crisis of confidence has alarmed the world's policy makers, most notably finance ministers and ...

Ed Balls Speech, Labour Conference 2011

Ryan Bourne, Economic Researcher at the Centre for Policy Studies, gives his reaction to Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls' speech at the Labour Party Conference 2011.“Whilst Ed Balls is right to state that stronger economic growth is required to eliminate the deficit, his speech today underestimated the ...

The Euro’s Gulity Men: It’s time to start listening to those who took them on

Today sees the launch of Guilty Men by Peter Oborne and Frances Weaver, with foreword by Peter Jay, and published by the Centre for Policy Studies. The report, an in depth look at the journalists, politicians and institutions that not only pushed heavily for Britain to ...

Were Kofi Annan and the other signatories to the Global Commission on Drugs Policy misled by the Report’s exaggerated claim of rising global drug use?

With the report of her CPS factsheet "Misleading and Irresponsible Drug Prevalence Statistics: The Global Commission on Drug Policy’s provocative claims of non existent rises do not further rational drug policy debate", Research Fellow Kathy Gyngell examines the impact on the Global Comission and the Liberal ...

The easiest way to simplify NICs is to abolish them

CPS Research Fellow David Martin outlines why the Treasury's "Call for Evidence" on simplifying income tax and National Insurance contributions should consider the abolition of NICs altogether, a position he first adopted in the CPS publication "Abolish NICs: Towards a more honest, fairer and simpler system".HM Treasury are ...

Foreign Policy Enters the 2012 Race

In the second of his guest blogs for the CPS, Ted Bromund highlights how foreign policy is becoming increasingly important in the build up to the 2012 Presidential raceConventional wisdom holds that elections in democracies are normally won or lost on bread and butter issues: if ...

What the government can do to really help families

On Tuesday, we learned that the Government has drawn up some policy proposals which it thinks are woman and family friendly. It included some eminently sensible proposals to re-examine the length of the school summer holiday, to develop personal budgets for maternity services and to criminalise enforced ...

Tough on truancy

No chance unless dysfunctional monitoring systems, as well as dysfunctional families, are faced down.What chance is there that David Cameron’s and Michael Gove’s threat to remove child benefit from errant parents will crack this age old problem? Will this sanction and stepping up of punitive activity be any more effective ...

What if both George Osborne and Ed Balls are right on the economy, but wrong on the solutions?

The economic strategy of the Coalition government was relatively simple: make a credible plan to eliminate the budget deficit in order to placate the markets, and private sector growth will more than compensate for diminished government spending. To that extent, the strategy relies on the idea ...

Academic economists agree - it's time to get rid of 50p

Today, 20 economists wrote to the FT to explain why the UK should scrap the 50p tax rate as soon as possible. This position, which has been advocated by the CPS since the rate’s inception, finally appears to gaining traction.To the wider public, being squeezed by the burgeoning cost of ...

The revival of Karl Marx and our current crisis

Many will have smirked as I did at the news that a tourist in Ilfracombe had officially complained about the sight and smell of fish in the harbour. Some perhaps remembered the case of the school headmistress forced to resign last year after having her school’s pet sheep slaughtered so ...

The Armani Riots

When I lived in Birmingham I occasionally used to visit the new Harvey Nichols store. There was a Paul Smith pinstripe suit that I particularly liked. Over a period of months I watched its price come down, but not even during the sale did it come ...