Obama's real economic team

On Saturday, the WSJ knew exactly who would be joining Tim Geithner in Barack Obama's economic team:

Congressional Budget Office director Peter Orszag will be Mr. Obama's budget director. Jacob Lew, a former Clinton budget director, will head the White House's National Economic Council. Jason Furman, the economic policy director of the Obama campaign, is likely to be Mr. Lew's deputy. And Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist and long-time policy confidante, is expected to chair the Council of Economic Advisers.

Today, the official announcement was made. And it features none of the...

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Towards the Swedish Model

We might be moving, in one aspect at least, towards something like the Swedish Model in the structure of employment in this country.

The picture that emerges when the employment patterns of female workers are scrutinised is especially stark. According to the Office for National Statistics’ Annual Business Inquiry, of the 1.07m additional jobs taken by women between 1998 and 2006, 963,000 were in the sectors where the public sector predominates or is almost the sole purchaser of services, such as health, education, social care and public administration.

The number of jobs held by women in purely...

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This politicians and blogs thing

Something I've not seen before, a development in political blogging (that is the use by a politician of a blog, not the sort of thing I do which is the use of a blog to excoriate politics and politicians):

John Redwood, the former Cabinet minister and Chairman of the Economic Competitiveness Policy Group set up by Mr Cameron, added that the idea of VAT cuts stimulating the economy showed that Labour had "lost the plot."

He said: "Just about the worst tax cut they could design is a VAT cut. It's costly on the revenue,...

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Is Brown's debt binge worrying the lenders?

Might Gordon Brown take so many risks with the public finances that Britain would be considered in danger of defaulting on its loans? This prospect may be laughed off in Westminster, but not in the City where five-year contracts on UK gilts today surged another 4bps to a record high of 87.5bps. In English, this means investors are now paying £8,750 a year to insure every £1m of UK government debt against default.  It’s a straight equation: the higher this premium rises, the greater the perceived chance of government insolvency.

Credibility in...

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Weasel No.1: turning the VAT cut into a tax rise

Okay, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, but I suspect I’ve spotted the first tax con of the budget – because there is a way Brown can turn the VAT cut into a tax rise for small businesses. He may find it too alluring to resist. Small firms and sole traders must charge VAT to their customers at 17.5%, but if their turnover is below a certain threshold they pay their VAT to HMRC at a flat rate of, say, 12.5%. They keep the difference, 5%, on which they’d pay corporation tax.  Now, if the VAT rate falls to...

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