Business

Comment on business today: see also www.ambrielconsulting.com

Financial Institutions (Reform) Bill – Liability of bankers and treatment of bonuses

by Steve Baker 27 February 2012 in Politics, Business Comments are Disabled

A developed society like ours needs a good means of exchange, unit of account and store of value: a good money. It also needs a vibrant, dynamic, reliable and robust means of executing payments and intermediating savings to entrepreneurs: we need a good banking system. Unfortunately, Of all the many ways […]

Survival of the unfittest: why the worst infrastructure gets built—and what we can do about it

by Steve Baker 27 January 2012 in Business, Politics 2 comments

Via Survival of the unfittest: why the worst infrastructure gets built—and what we can do about it: […] Taken together, the UK and US studies both account well for existing data on cost underestimation and benefit overestimation. Both studies falsify the notion that in situations with high political and organizational […]

Bank of England’s Haldane endorses concerns on bogus bank accounting

by Ex-staff 20 January 2012 in Politics, Business Comments are Disabled

The Bank of England’s Executive Director Financial Stability, Andy Haldane, has set out the case for banks to be held to different accounting standards because the existing rules have may allowed banks to overstate their profits and exacerbate their losses. This is something I covered in a private members’ bill […]

Hayek’s neglected truths about credit, capital and the trade cycle

by Steve Baker 7 January 2012 in Business, Politics Comments are Disabled

Last night, I caught up with Martin Wolf’s November programmes for Radio 4 Analysis, which you can find here. He offered a predictable blend of commentators calling for more money printing, world central banking and greater global governance. It prompted me to look out Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle […]

Criticising HS2 via the FT

by Steve Baker 6 January 2012 in Business, Politics Comments are Disabled

Via High-speed rail link must be built, economists insist – FT.com: Steve Baker, MP for Wycombe, said he was unconvinced that the huge cost of the scheme was justified. “The maths doesn’t add up; this is just sinking capital into a lossmaking project. If you’re going to use the power […]

Wishing everyone a prosperous new year

by Steve Baker 3 January 2012 in Politics, Business 1 comment

After so much economic turmoil, the traditional wish for a prosperous new year can be given with considerable vigour. The 2010 Legatum Prosperity Index (PDF) – “the world’s only global assessment of wealth and wellbeing” – showed that entrepreneurship and opportunity are the primary keys to prosperity, that they correlate more […]

Pressing the Chancellor on bank accounting

by Steve Baker 19 December 2011 in Politics, Business Comments are Disabled

Via Hansard: Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con): Chapter 3 of the Government’s report, on loss absorbency, seems, perhaps reasonably, to take for granted the adequacy of accounting standards. I press the Chancellor in his forthcoming White Paper to consider seriously the pernicious effects of the international financial reporting standards, which were applied […]

How banks unjustly inflate profits, boost capital and pay unearned bonuses

by Steve Baker 14 December 2011 in Business, Politics Comments are Disabled

Yesterday in Parliament, I chaired an event with Gordon Kerr, launching his report The Law of Opposites, which is covered in the Guardian today: Banks use accounting loopholes to inflate their profits and bolster staff bonuses, according to a report published on Wednesday that calls for changes to the international […]

Banker and economist to explain to Occupy St Paul’s how bankers falsify profits and misappropriate bailout funds

by Steve Baker 9 December 2011 in Politics, Business Comments are Disabled

Tomorrow, Saturday December 10th at 1.30pm, my colleagues Gordon Kerr and Kevin Dowd will appear on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral to explain how bankers falsify profits and misappropriate bailout funds for personal benefit. Kerr will set out: How derivatives transactions are structured to game flawed accounting rules and […]

If this is capitalism, I am not a capitalist

by Steve Baker 7 December 2011 in Politics, Business 10 comments

I spoke last night in the general debate on the economy, saying*: As I rise to speak I am reminded of a quotation from an economist who was a fierce critic of Keynes, a chap called Henry Hazlitt, who said: “Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged […]