Banking
We don’t need research to change banking culture. We need jail sentences
Was the Financial Conduct Authority leaned on by the Chancellor to scrap its ‘review of banking culture’? Or did it…
We must play the blame game over HBOS. How else will bankers learn?
‘Everyone remembers the names of Applegarth of Northern Rock and Goodwin of RBS, but history may judge the HBOS men…
Letters: Why politicians should leave doctors’ pay and hours alone
The NHS and politicians Sir: The NHS is indeed in need of fundamental reform, but Max Pemberton’s excellent article (‘The…
If the world economy crashes again, blame the central bankers
Like the Christmas pudding sampled by Hercule Poirot at Kings Lacey — but six weeks early — our Spectator Money…
Maybe bitcoin isn’t the work of the devil, after all
I confess to being an out-and-out Luddite when it comes to bitcoin and other so-called crypto-currencies. To the extent that…
The good economic news that we forgot in the China panic
Home from the hot Aegean, huddled by the fire as rain ruins the bank holiday weekend, I’m thinking: what gloom…
This time we really are getting tough on dodgy bankers (just don’t expect it to reach the boardroom)
Fourteen years is a long stretch. The punishment imposed on former UBS and Citigroup trader Tom Hayes for his role…
A broad farce about banking’s dirty secrets in post-Celtic-Tiger Dublin
It’s not Paul Murray’s settings or themes — decadent aristocrats, clerical sex abuse, the financial crisis — that mark him…
Why the City might yet miss stroppy regulator Martin Wheatley
A City insider at last month’s Mansion House dinner told me the Financial Conduct Authority had become ‘a bit of…
Osborne’s false prophet: why Jim O’Neill will never deliver a ‘northern powerhouse’
Why Jim O’Neill isn’t fit to run the Northern Powerhouse
The dinner where laissez-faire banking died
Last week’s deadline did not allow me to report from ringside at the Mansion House dinner, but there was so…
From surfing to takeovers: the story behind the richest man in Brazil
The tectonic plates of economic life rumble and shift. As ever, market watchers are obsessed by big themes — and…
‘The problem isn’t that we’ve been slaves to free markets’: Joseph Stiglitz interview
Joseph Stiglitz, the left’s favourite economist,on making the free market work
Why David Cameron is best placed to win the crucial Ikea vote
If Ikea were a constituency, it would be a three-way marginal. That was my thought one morning last week as…
Why so many bankers secretly like Labour’s non-dom proposal
The interesting thing about Labour’s pledge to abolish non-dom tax status — a squib designed to trap Tories into expressing…
So the FTSE100 has finally broken its record – it’s still not doing nearly as well as executive pay
The FTSE100 index has at last breached 7,000, surpassing its peak of 30 December 1999 and provoking moderate celebration among…
Here’s what a real reform of business rates would look like
Of all the measures talked up ahead of the Budget, the reannouncement of a ‘radical’ review of the business rates…
Won’t someone please unleash the challenger banks?
In my Yorkshire town of Helmsley the NatWest branch, originally an outpost of Beckett & Co of Leeds, has closed…
Paul Mason’s diary: My Greek TV drama
It’ll be a Skype interview, says the producer from Greek television, and not live. In TV-speak that usually means not…