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Microeconomics // Firms, Markets & Industries

11/6/09 Oil price leaps to year's high The price of oil burst through the $71 a barrel mark today amid revelations that proven reserves had fallen for the first time in 10 years and predictions that the price could eventually hit $250. The latest high – from lows of $30 only four months ago – came on the New York Mercantile Exchange, where the cost of July deliveries rose by $1.35 to $71.36. [G]

9/6/09 Fury as Lloyds closes Cheltenham & Gloucester branches and cuts 1,660 jobs Lloyds Banking Group provoked a furious reaction from unions and MPs ... over its plans to shut all 164 Cheltenham & Gloucester branches and cut a further 1,660 jobs. The decision, which came on the day the taxpayer's stake in the bailed out bank rose temporarily to 45.74%, takes the total job cull at the UK's largest high street bank to more than 4,000 since it was created in January by Lloyds TSB's rescue of HBOS. Further job cuts, as many as 25,000, are expected from the combined 140,000 workforce during the three-year integration. [G]

8/6/09 Van maker LDV collapses into administration The Birmingham-based van maker LDV fell into administration ... after teetering on the brink for months when a prospective bidder failed to raise enough money. As many as 3,000 jobs at dealers and suppliers have been put at risk by the failure of the firm, which has already made most of its staff redundant. [G]

4/6/09 Green energy overtakes fossil fuel investment, says UN Clean technologies attract $140bn compared with $110bn for gas, coal and electrical power... The biggest growth for renewable investment came from China, India and other developing countries, which are fast catching up on the West in switching out of fossil fuels to improve energy security and tackle climate change. [G]

2/6/09 Ryanair reports first loss in 20 years as Aer Lingus foray backfires Michael O'Leary launched a second takeover bid for Ireland's flag carrier Aer Lingus last year but was rebuffed by the Irish government and trade unions. [G]

1/6/09 General Motors declares bankruptcy – the biggest manufacturing collapse in US history America's biggest carmaker, General Motors, declared itself bankrupt today in a legal filing at a federal courthouse in downtown Manhattan, kicking off the biggest industrial insolvency in US history. GM filed for Chapter 11 protection against its creditors' demands at 8am local time after racking up losses of $81bn (£50bn) over four years, putting a veteran bankruptcy judge, Robert Gerber, in charge of the future of 235,000 employees worldwide. [G]

1/6/09 U.S. Corporations Size Up Their Carbon Footprints Coca-Cola, Cisco, Intuit, and others use ever-more-sophisticated tools to measure their environmental impact and meet emissions goals... The go-green impetus has spawned a cottage industry of vendors specializing in software specifically to measure, track, and manage carbon emissions... Demand for better carbon accounting comes not just from corporate brass, but also from investors, customers, consumers, and employees who want detailed information about a corporation's environmental impact. Among the leaders of the charge is the Carbon Disclosure Project, a nonprofit organization that has assembled the largest corporate greenhouse gas emissions database in the world. The group is backed by 475 institutional investors that manage $55 trillion in assets. Last year, 321 companies that make up 64% of the corporations listed in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index responded to a request for emissions information from the Carbon Disclosure Project, up from 235 in 2006. [BusinessWeek]

27/5/09 Santander blazes a brand trail through the high street with its flame logo Familiar brands such as Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley are about to disappear. Santander, the Spanish owner of the three brands, intends to plant its own name on the high street by the end of 2010 by which time its flame logo should be hanging over 1,300 branches and bring an end to a combined 475 years of financial history. Even before the latest announcement from Santander, data from the British Bankers' Association shows that in the past 20 years, 17 high street names have collapsed in to 10. [G]

27/5/09 General Motors talks hit brick wall in Berlin ... Only two firms are now in the running – the Italian carmaker Fiat and Canadian auto-parts maker Magna. US investor Ripplewood Holdings and China's Beijing Automotive Industry Corp have both now withdrawn. [G]

14/5/09 Corporate social responsibility: A stress test for good intentions The recession is a test of companies’ commitments to doing good... As firms grapple with a brutal economic downturn, they are taking a long, hard look at the resources they devote to everything from supporting charities to making their activities carbon-neutral. That is hardly surprising: cutting back on CSR, or “sustainability” as it is sometimes known, would seem to be a quick and relatively painless way to save money. Cassandras who felt many CSR initiatives were little more than publicity stunts in the first place predicted that they would perish as soon as the economy fell off a cliff. There have indeed been cuts to CSR budgets. [Economist]

13/5/09 Intel fined €1bn for breaking competition law The giant chipmaker Intel has been ordered to pay a €1.06bn (£950m) fine to the European commission for anticompetitive practices involving its rival AMD and payments offered to PC makers for using its chips. Under the commission's rules, the maximum fine is 10% of global turnover – which for Intel could have meant up to $3.7bn (£2.4bn) Brussels says the company gave price discounts to computer manufacturers Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo and NEC for buying all or almost all their chips from Intel. [G]

11/5/09 CCS: Energy firms seek opt-outs over 2025 carbon capture deadline Energy companies will lobby the government for a get-out clause from the deadline to fully fit carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology to new coal plants by 2025 because they are worried it might not work in time. Companies, including German-owned groups E.ON and RWE npower, want guarantees that they will not be forced to close their coal-fired plants in 2025 if the technology has not been proven by then. [G]

11/5/09 Car wars: how Alan Mulally kept Ford ahead of its rivals ... Alone among Detroit's "big three" motor companies, Ford is standing upright without a financial crutch from the US government. Chrysler has slumped into bankruptcy and General Motors, once the world's biggest carmaker, is limping in the direction of the insolvency courts. [G]

8/5/09 Toyota reports record loss and predicts worse to come Toyota hopes to reduce fixed costs by almost ¥500bn in the coming year by cutting production and laying off thousands of temporary workers. [G]

1/5/09 Chrysler declares itself bankrupt America's third-largest car manufacturer, Chrysler, has declared itself bankrupt after a handful of creditors withstood pressure from the Obama administration to forgive billions of dollars in debt, casting a cloud of uncertainty over tens of thousands of jobs at factories, suppliers and dealers. [G]

27/4/09 US government may take controlling share of General Motors Struggling carmaker GM offers debt-for-equity plan in a desperate attempt to avoid bankruptcy. The ailing carmaker General Motors has proposed handing a controlling stake of more than 50% to the US government as it struggles to reach a deal with its lenders to avert imminent bankruptcy. The nationalisation, in effect, of the biggest US motor manufacturer would be part of a huge debt-for-equity swap as GM tries to shed $44bn (£30bn) of $62bn in crippling liabilities owed to the government, trade unions and bondholders. [G]

27/4/09 BP profits slump 62% BP is cutting spending on new projects after suffering a 62% drop in profits following the slump in the oil price. The energy giant reported this morning that it made a profit of $2.387bn (£1.64bn) in the first three months of this year, down from $6.231bn a year ago. It blamed the fall in the price of oil, which fluctuated between $35 and $50 a barrel during the quarter, while a year ago a barrel cost more than $100. [G]

21/4/09 Tesco unveils record profits of £3bn Supermarket giant Tesco bucks financial gloom with biggest profit ever reported by a British retailer. Tesco has defied the economic gloom and beaten City forecasts by posting record profits of more than £3bn in the last financial year. Total revenue soared to £59.4bn, taking sales to more than £1bn a week for the first time. [G]

7/4/09 Jaguar and Nissan scoop £720m funding boost Loans from European Investment Bank will be used to develop greener vehicles. Carmakers Jaguar Land Rover and Nissan ... received a £720m boost from the European Investment Bank (EIB), the EU's main source of long-term lending, which has given the go-ahead for loans that will allow the companies to invest in greener vehicles. Jaguar Land Rover has secured approval for a £340m loan for investment in research and development of more fuel-efficient cars at its Midlands and Merseyside factories. [G]

6/4/09 Innocent drinks offer a taste to Coca-Cola Despite selling up to a 20% stake to the US corporate giant Coca-Cola, Innocent still declare it won't change their eco-friendly, local values. Innocent, the defiantly non-corporate maker of fruit smoothies, juices and veg pots, has finally lost its innocence after selling a stake to US giant Coca-Cola for £30m. Innocent, which markets itself as eco-friendly and distributes drinks in vans made to look like cows, has sold a minority stake of between 10% and 20% to Coca-Cola in order to raise funds so it can expand into Europe. The sale of the stake marks a watershed moment for the 10-year-old company as it becomes the latest high profile success story to sell-up to a corporate giant. [G]

6/4/09 Car sales fall 30% despite new March number plates Car sales in Britain have fallen by more than 200,000 in the first three months of the year, triggering fresh calls from the industry for a car scrappage scheme in this month's budget. Despite the arrival of the new 09 number plates, new car registrations fell by 30.5% to 313,912 cars last month from a year ago, according to the latest figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. Coming after sharp falls in the previous two months, this means car sales were down by 29.7% between January and March to 480,358, although sales of small cars and diesel-powered vehicles held up well. [G]

30/3/09 Obama threatens US car industry with bankruptcy Barack Obama demands radical reform, and quickly, as he delays a decision about more cash for struggling carmakers. President Barack Obama raised the possibility that two of Detroit's teetering carmakers could be forced into bankruptcy ..., blasting General Motors and Chrysler for failed leadership, unrealistic business plans and a slow rate of reform. The White House earlier ordered the resignation of GM's veteran boss and instructed cash-strapped Chrysler to surrender its independence to Italy's Fiat. [G]

26/3/09 The brand new fridge freezers that cost 18p each… and other ways to avoid tax When multinationals trade assets between their national subsidiaries, some do so at vastly reduced prices – often depriving developing countries' exchequers of revenue... About 60% of world trade now takes place within rather than between multinational corporations. When transactions take place within a group of companies with the same parent, the price at which they are concluded is covered by a system called "transfer pricing". As part of the price, subsidiaries may be charged fees for intellectual property rights, management services, use of brands and logistics expertise. These services are meant to be determined "at arm's length" or at the rate that the open market would charge. [G]

26/3/09 All in this together How is the co-operative model coping with the recession? THESE are difficult times for the Fagor appliance factory in Mondragón, in northern Spain. Sales have seized up, as at many other white-goods companies. Workers had four weeks’ pay docked at Christmas. Some have been laid off. Now salaries are about to be cut by 8%. Time for Spain’s mighty unions to call a strike? Not at Fagor—for here the decisions are taken by the workers themselves. [Economist]

20/3/09 New whistleblower claims over £1bn Barclays tax deals Further detailed allegations about tax avoidance schemes set up by Barclays Bank emerged tonight from whistleblowers who said the bank made close to £1bn profit a year from a series of elaborate deals. The schemes are similar to those detailed in documents published by the Guardian this week which have been the centre of a three-day hearing at the high court, and are the subject of a gagging order. [G] All of the gagged documents are in the public domain, courtesy of Wikileaks

16/3/09 Ford cuts production in Europe The crisis in Europe's shrunken car industry deepened today when Ford cut production and extended the shorter working week at two of its core continental plants. Ford executives battened down the hatches for a prolonged downturn in demand stretching years ahead by warning of more cutbacks to come. Their comments came as consultants said cumulative cash burn this year could be between €18bn (£16.6bn) and €30bn and revenues could plunge by up to €60bn via a 20% slump in output. They forecast a wave of bankruptcies among suppliers as assembly line volumes collapse by a third this year. [G]

9/3/09 Drugs giant Merck seals $41bn merger with Schering-Plough Further contraction in the US pharmaceuticals industry prompts a second high-profile merger. Merck announced a $41.1bn (£29.8bn) takeover of rival drug firm Schering-Plough, the second blockbusting deal in the pharmaceutical industry in as many months. The mergers are taking place against an increasingly tough climate for the pharmaceutical industry. The big firms are facing slumping sales as many of their best-selling drugs approach the end of their patents and there is a dearth of new treatments to take their place. [G]

7/3/09 Government takes over Lloyds Taxpayer will own up to 77% of banking group after disastrous merger with HBOS as pressure grows on board to resign. The government ... confirmed it will take majority control of Lloyds Banking Group, with the taxpayer owning 65% of the voting shares in return for insuring £260bn of the group's toxic assets. After days of detailed negotiations the terms of the takeover were announced by the Treasury, with Lloyds making a commitment to lend at least £28bn over the next few years. [G]

6/3/09 The times are finally right for the different drummer The Co-op's chief executive is the driving force behind a group happy to find it has suddenly become cool... In the 60s, the Co-op was the dominant force in UK food retail but the intervening decades saw the loose collective of societies overthrown by leaner, meaner competitors including Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury's. However, the acquisition of Somerfield puts the Co-op back in the premier league, boosting its market share to 8% and creating a credible fifth force behind Morrisons with 11.8%. Tesco still leads the pack by a country mile with 30.3%. The deal promises to make a huge difference to Co-op shoppers as, with 3,000 stores and sales of £7bn, the enlarged retailer will have more clout with big-name suppliers to strike the deals that are key to its ability to compete with the likes of Asda and Tesco in a cut-throat retail climate... It took a meltdown of the global financial system but, grey skies aside, the Co-op's particular brand of ethical capitalism is having its moment in the sun. [G]

4/3/09 Tesco wins appeal on competition test Tesco has won an appeal against a proposal from competition watchdogs which could have severely restricted the number of new stores it can open. The Competition Appeals Tribunal backed the UK's biggest grocer and opposed a plan put forward by the Competition Commission to make new supermarket developments subject to a "competition test". [G]

4/3/09 GM Europe says it needs £3bn of state aid to survive General Motors Europe has piled more pressure on governments including Britain to provide €3.3bn (£3bn) of state aid by warning that it expects to run out of cash this month. Senior executives said that if the company, comprising Opel and Vauxhall, went under it would put up to 300,000 jobs across Europe at risk. Its US parent, which is slashing 47,000 jobs, including 26,000 overseas, is seeking $30bn (£21bn) of federal aid. [G]

5/2/09 Brown faces his biggest rebellion as Labour anger at postal sell-off grows ... Ministers insist the service needs part-privatisation in order to survive and are expected to announce tomorrow plans to sell 30% of it to drive forward modernisation, despite a manifesto "ambition" to keep the Royal Mail in public ownership. The government has said it will take on the pension liabilities of the service to make it more attractive to the possible private partner, likely to be the Dutch contractor TNT. [G]

12/2/09 Cash-strapped Rio Tinto reveals $20bn Chinese bail-out Rio Tinto ... unveiled a near $20bn (£13.95bn) bail-out by the Chinese government, a move which looks set to spark a major row with the mining giant's institutional shareholders. The group said that it had agreed a $19.5bn injection of funds from Chinalco, which could see the Chinese state-owned aluminum firm double its stake in Rio to 18%. The deal is China's largest ever investment in a foreign company. [G]

9/2/09 Nissan to cut 20,000 jobs worldwide Nissan ... said it would cut 20,000 jobs worldwide amid plunging sales, making it the latest Japanese carmaker to resort to drastic measures in response to the financial crisis. Japan's third-biggest automaker after Toyota and Honda said it expected a net loss of ¥265bn (£1.95bn) for the year to the end of March, compared with an earlier estimate of a ¥160bn profit. [G]

2/2/09 The Tax Gap The Guardian will examine the extent of tax avoidance by big business, day-by-day over two weeks. We are naming more than 20 major British companies, and analysing their secretive tax strategies to ask: are they paying their fair share? [G] including Firms' secret tax avoidance schemes cost UK billions, Offshore - and out of reach to the Revenue, From the high street to a tax haven

30/1/09 Ford makes worst loss in its history Carmaker loses nearly $15bn in a year, but says it doesn't need a government handout to survive – yet. The Ford motor company suffered the worst annual loss in its 105-year-history last year, slumping $14.6bn (£10.2bn) into the red, although it insisted today it still hoped to survive without a government handout. As consumers steered clear of showrooms and banks cut off funding for car loans, Ford's performance deteriorated sharply towards the end of the year with a $5.8bn loss in the fourth quarter. [G]

30/1/09 Toyota set to post first net loss since 1963 Japanese carmakers' woes deepened today amid reports that Toyota will suffer much bigger operating losses than the ¥150bn (£1.2bn) it projected a month ago. The firm is now expected to post an annual loss of about ¥400bn, the Nikkei business daily said. [G]

28/1/09 Pay packet envy: the greed that drove the City's bonus culture
The men who made millions while the banking system crumbled ... The concern about City bonuses has not just been their size but the way they are structured. In existence for long before the credit crunch, they were once regarded as a legitimate way to pay staff in an industry that has cyclical earnings and only one real cost: people... In the old-style City partnerships the profits were distributed among partners at the end of each year. They were largely profits generated from giving advice to companies and did not involve taking big risks that could backfire later. [G]

27/1/09 Britain's big polluters accused of abusing EU's carbon trading scheme Britain's biggest polluting companies are abusing a European emissions trading scheme (ETS) designed to tackle global warming by cashing in their carbon credits in order to bolster ailing balance sheets . The sell-off has helped trigger a collapse in the price of carbon, making it cheaper to burn high-carbon fossil fuels and leading to a fall in the number of clean energy projects. The moves were seized on by environmentalists and other critics who have previously criticised the European Union's ETS for delivering more windfall profits for business than climate change. [G]

21/1/09 Britannia and Co-operative to create £70bn 'super-mutual' Britannia building society and the Co-operative's financial arm yesterday agreed a £70bn "super-mutual" merger with the financial muscle to acquire other societies and insurers in the first new-model institution to emerge out of the rubble of the credit crisis. [G]

16/1/09 Honda to extend shut-down at Swindon plant Honda said ... it was halting production at its Swindon plant in April and May, extending the two-month closure announced before Christmas to four months. The company said in November that it would halt production in February and March, with 4,800 workers receiving full basic pay. Today the company said that because of the continuing fall in demand it was extending the closure, with workers getting 50% of their pay. [G]

14/1/09 Mandelson insists Royal Mail part-privatisation will go ahead Business secretary says government will press on with plan to bring 'gale force of fresh air' to state-owned company's management structure ... As Labour rebels geared up for a fight over the proposals, the business secretary said that, with the government already prepared to take on responsibility for the state-owned company's ballooning pension fund deficit, it was too much to expect the taxpayer to take on the whole burden of financing the modernisation of the company. [G]

14/1/09 Private equity profits come from loading firms with debt – report More than half the profits generated by private equity firms in recent years have been made by piling debt on to the books of the companies they invest in, according to a report ... The findings of the first annual report on the industry, designed to increase transparency and improve the image of private equity, instead provided further ammunition for the industry's critics. [G]

13/1/09 Tesco results add to UK economic gloom Britain's descent into full-blown recession was highlighted today as Tesco reported its weakest Christmas sales since the last slump, and three grim surveys chronicled the savage retrenchment in housing, retailing, manufacturing and services. [G]

11/1/09 Primark in storm over conditions at UK supplier Britain's high street fashion giant Primark was at the centre of a storm last night over allegations that illegal immigrants paid just over half the minimum wage had been employed to make fashionable knitwear for one of the firm's bestselling ranges. [Observer]

8/1/09 Nissan axes 1,200 jobs The crisis facing Britain's car industry deepened today when Nissan announced plans to cut the 5,000-strong workforce at its Sunderland plant by 1,200. The cutback will involve 800 permanent jobs and 400 temporary staff as the company, Britain's biggest car producer and exporter, bids to curb production in the face of falling demand. [G]

7/1/09 M&S axes up to 1,230 jobs Marks & Spencer is axing up to 1,230 jobs and shutting 27 stores after suffering its worst sales performance for a decade. The high-street retailer said this morning it would shut 25 "under-performing" Simply Food outlets, out of a total of 350, and two main stores. This will cost the jobs of up to 780 staff and a further 450 jobs will be cut at its head office. M&S employs about 70,000 people worldwide. [G]

7/1/09 Small is powerful The Basque region is the proposed setting for the world's first 'social Silicon Valley'. Alison Benjamin meets two Spaniards intent on creating a post-industrial revolution... The Basque country has a long history of supporting co-operatives, which use business methods to meet social goals. The world's largest co-operative group, Mondragón, now Spain's sixth largest company, with a €1bn turnover and 100,000 people employed globally in more than 250 companies, began here more than 50 years ago. Since then, hundreds of co-ops have set up all over the region, attracted by generous tax allowances in return for investing 10% of their annual surpluses in the local community to support education, cultural activities and youth employment. [G]

6/1/09 It will take more than goodwill and greenwash to save the biosphere
[George Monbiot] Shell may boast about tackling climate change, but companies tend always to sacrifice good intentions for hard cash. For a while it seemed that Shell had stopped pretending. The advertisements that filled the newspapers in 2006, featuring technicians with perfect teeth and open-necked shirts explaining how they were saving the world, vanished. After being slated by environmentalists for greenwash, after two adverse rulings by the Advertising Standards Authority, Shell appeared to have accepted the inescapable truth that it was an oil company with a minor sideline in alternative energy, and that there was no point in trying to persuade people otherwise. [G]

5/1/09 Retraining, not bail-outs Gordon Brown's acknowledgment yesterday that he is studying a move by Japanese car maker Nissan at its Sunderland plant to combine short-time working with government-financed retraining shows that old-style bailouts of car makers are a thing of the past. [G]

23/12/08 Sales slump puts Toyota on track for first loss in 70 years The crisis facing the world's automotive industry deepened ... as Toyota, one of the global elite, revealed it was on course to record its first operating loss in more than 70 years. A combination of sliding sales and a surging yen has battered profits at Japan's biggest carmaker, which said it expected operating losses for the year to the end of next March to total ¥150bn (£1.1bn), a huge turnaround from its previous forecast of a ¥600bn operating profit. [G]

17/12/08 Opec surprises with cut of 2.2m barrels a day Opec ministers today surprised the oil markets by agreeing to slash production more deeply than expected in a desperate bid to push up the oil price. The petroleum cartel, led by Saudi Arabia, promised to take 2.2m barrels a day out of the market in a move heralded by one analyst as "the end of the bear market". [G]

12/12/08 A Big Three US carmaker bankruptcy could be 'tipping point' Auto industry experts have warned that the bankruptcy of General Motors or Chrysler will have a devastating affect on the US economy and could endanger other manufacturers including Ford. The cash needs of GM and Chrysler are the most immediate and they have asked for a total of $14bn (£9.3bn) in federal funds to prevent them going under before the month end. Chrysler, whose finances are in the most parlous state, burned through $3bn in the third quarter of 2008 and has just $6.1bn in cash remaining. Over the same period, GM used up a higher-than-expected $6.9bn and has reserves of $16.2bn. [G]

11/12/08 Tesco slashes 50% off to tempt wait-and-see shoppers The savage price war on the high street escalated today as Tesco announced deep discounts on 1,000 products.Britain's biggest supermarket is slashing up to 50% off a range of goods to pull in reluctant customers and clear stocks, in response to the closing down sale at the collapsed Woolworths chain... [G]

9/12/08 Sony to cut 8,000 jobs Sony is to cut 8,000 jobs worldwide and close several factories in an attempt to save $1.1bn (£745m) a year as the global economic slowdown forces another Japanese corporate giant to take crisis measures. The firm said the job losses, the biggest announced by an Asian firm so far in the current crisis, would come in its core electronics division, but did not offer a country breakdown of the cuts. [G]

9/12/08 Price war takes diesel below £1 a litre for first time in a year The price of diesel fell below £1 a litre for the first time in over a year yesterday, in what was hailed as a "stunning drop" in a price war led by the supermarket chain Morrisons. The Bradford-based retailer cut the price of diesel by 5p - taking it to 34p less than its July high - after recent sharp falls in the price of crude oil. BP, Asda and Sainsbury's all followed, cutting diesel to 99.9p a litre. Tesco added that it would be slashing the price of petrol by 1p a litre and diesel by 3p a litre at all of its forecourts. [G]

8/12/08 US ready to offer Detroit a $15bn bail-out General Motors and Chrysler were close to securing a $15bn (£10bn) bail-out from Washington last night as the White House and Congressional leaders prepared to appoint a "car tsar". Legislation to spare GM and Chrysler from bankruptcy could be unveiled today. It is understood that loans will be granted to the Detroit-based manufacturers as a stopgap measure until January, when Barack Obama assumes the presidency and Congress reconvenes. [G]

3/12/08 The road to ruin Once the proud home of America's mighty car industry, Detroit now faces meltdown. Tomorrow, the bosses of Ford, Chrysler and GM will make their final plea for a $25bn government bailout to save their firms, the legacy of Motor City - and nearly 2m jobs. [G]

2/12/08 EU reaches compromise deal on car emission caps Deal gives European car makers more time to cut CO2 emissions from new vehicles and relaxes penalties for pollution but ties them into a more ambitious longer-term target. [G]

2/12/08 Discount drive hits Tesco sales Tesco has suffered its weakest sales growth since the mid-1990s after targeting cash-stretched customers with cheaper brands. Britain's biggest supermarket chain reported this morning that like-for-like sales, excluding petrol, rose by 2% in the last three months – just half the growth achieved in the previous quarter. The figures underlined the difficulties facing the UK retail sector as the recession bites, with high street names such as Marks & Spencer holding 20%-off one-day sales to try to stimulate sales, and Moss Bros issuing a profit warning ... [G]

2/12/08 Ford considering Volvo sale Struggling automotive manufacturer Ford said ... it could sell its luxury Swedish arm Volvo as part of a strategic review of the business. The announcement came as the fragile state of the global car industry was underlined by plummeting sales figures for November. Ford and its fellow US carmakers, General Motors and Chrysler will submit business plans to the US Congress on Tuesday in a bid to win backing for a $25bn (£16.78bn)emergency aid package. [G]

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Macroeconomics // National & Global Issues

10/6/09 China launches green power revolution to catch up on west China is planning a vast increase in its use of wind and solar power over the next ­decade and believes it can match Europe by 2020, producing a fifth of its energy needs from renewable sources, a senior Chinese official said ... Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice-chairman of China's national development and reform commission, told the Guardian that Beijing would easily surpass current 2020 targets for the use of wind and solar power and was now contemplating targets that were more than three times higher. [G] contrast to below:

10/6/09 China leads escalation of coal consumption Coal consumption is continuing to grow more quickly than other traditional sources despite high prices and the dangerous impact it will have on carbon emissions, new statistics released by oil giant BP show. China, which has been trumpeting its new wind and solar goals in recent days, led the way with a near 7% increase in the amount of coal it burned during 2008 despite average prices rising 73% to $150 (£129) per tonne. This accounts for 43% of global coal use. [G]

4/6/09 Bank of England keeps interest rates at 0.5% The Bank of England left interest rates on hold for the third month in a row ..., amid growing evidence that the worst of the recession may be over. The Bank's monetary policy committee (MPC) said after its latest monthly meeting that the Bank rate would remain at a historic low of 0.5% and it would not increase the scale of its quantitative easing (QE) programme to boost the money supply, which currently stands at £125bn. [G]

2/6/09 Eurozone unemployment hits 10-year high Unemployment in the eurozone rose to nearly 10% of the workforce last month as businesses continued to shed staff in the face of the worst global downturn since the second world war. The European Union statistics office said the unemployment rate in the 16-nation eurozone rose for the 13th month in a row to 9.2% in April, from 8.9% in March as 396,000 more people lost their jobs, bringing the number of people out of work to 14.579 million. It is the highest unemployment rate since September 1999. [G]

1/6/09 It's a funny old game: where is the dream team of economists to tackle the slump? ... Putting a team together of economists no longer with us is a breeze. A team of dead economists drawn from all strands of the discipline might include Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, Karl Marx, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, Richard Kahn, Joseph Schumpeter, Hyman Minsky and Herman Daly... Picking a modern 11 of comparable quality is a lot tougher. [G]

15/5/09 'Dramatic plunge' in German economy Biggest quarterly decline in GDP since records began in 1970 as export-driven country battered by collapse in world trade. Germany's economy has suffered its biggest quarterly decline on record - the worst in at least four decades - after a sharp drop in exports. The economy shrank by 3.8% in the first three months of the year compared with the previous quarter. Germany's federal statistical office said this was the biggest drop since it began compiling quarterly figures in 1970. It was also worse than the 3% fall forecast by economists. [G]

13/5/09 Bank of England believes recession has probably bottomed out The Bank of England said ... that the recession had probably bottomed out, but warned that any recovery would be hampered by the ongoing reluctance of banks to lend to consumers and businesses. Releasing a quarterly inflation report likely to cement expectations that interest rates could stay at record lows for a long time, the monetary policy committee forecast that inflation would probably remain below its 2% target for at least two years even if it kept rates at 0.5% and flooded the economy with £125bn of "quantitative easing". [G]

12/5/09 Unemployment figures chart grim decline that recalls worst moments of the 1980s Britain has experienced rising unemployment on the scale announced by the government ... – but not for almost three decades. The shake-out in the labour market that saw almost 250,000 people lose their jobs in the first three months of the year was the most savage since 1981 – the year Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer, Peter Sutcliffe was arrested as the Yorkshire Ripper and riots erupted on the streets of Brixton. [G]

29/4/09 US still deep in recession Economists had been forecasting a drop of 4.6% to 4.9% in the first quarter of this year. The American economy is in a worse state than economists feared with businesses dropping their spending plans, despite tentative signs of a pick-up in consumer confidence. American gross domestic product (GDP) - which tracks goods and services output within the country - dropped 6.1% over the first three months of the year, compared with 6.3% in the last three months of 2008. [G]

27/4/09 Green shoots will not mean healthy roots The fundamental imbalances in the global economy have been overlooked in the rush of short-term fixes ... Let's just recap on how we arrived at this juncture. Globalisation has led to the development of two groups of countries – those running big trade surpluses and those running big trade deficits. Germany and Japan provided the machines and high-grade capital goods that allowed China to become the source of low-cost manufactured goods. Countries where the industrial sectors had been hollowed out over the decades – such as the United States and Britain – were ready buyers for cheap imports. Inflation fell, allowing interest rates to fall. But manufacturing was not the only sector to be globalised. Banks became bigger and bigger, expanding their business across frontiers to the extent that national regulators found it harder to supervise them properly. With low inflation making traditionally safe investments less attractive, there was a global search for yield. As we now know, this led to speculative money flooding into places such as Iceland and into complex derivative products that nobody really understood. The banks became so big and had so many different functions that it was beyond the capacity of any chief executive – no matter how brilliant – to manage them properly. [G]

24/4/09 British economy shrinks at fastest rate for 30 years Official figures show GDP fell by 1.9% in the first three months of this year, the sharpest quarterly decline since 1979, the year Margaret Thatcher came to power. [G]

21/4/09 Global bank losses likely to reach $4.1 trillion, says IMF The global financial sector faces write-downs of $4.1tn (£2.8tn) from the toxic assets that have crashed in value since the start of the credit crunch 20 months ago, the International Monetary Fund said today. In its first comprehensive study of the impact of the crisis on banks and other financial institutions, the Fund said that it had increased its estimate of the potential losses in the US from $2.2tn to $2.7tn as a result of the deepening economic slump over the past three months. Europe and Japan between them account for $1.3tn of the write-downs, with UK banks facing losses of $316bn (£216bn). [G]

21/4/09 Deflation returns to Britain for first time since 1960 Deflation returned to Britain for the first time in nearly five decades last month as prices measured by the retail price index (RPI) were lower than the same time a year ago. [G] see also Bank's fear that inflation could become a runaway train won't end here [G]

16/4/09 Chinese economy shows slowest growth on record China's economy has slowed to its weakest growth rate on record after another sharp fall in exports. The world's third-largest economy grew at an annual rate of 6.1% in the first three months of this year, down from 6.8% in the fourth quarter of 2008, official figures showed today. It was the slowest expansion since quarterly records began in 1992. But there were also signs that the worst could be over for the Chinese economy. Industrial production jumped 8.3% in March from a year ago as the government poured money into state-owned companies. Investment in factories and other fixed assets soared 28.6%. [G]

14/4/09 New wave of job losses feared across Europe Mainland Europe is bracing itself for thousands more job cuts as Philips warned of further restructuring to staunch mounting losses and the German arm of Woolworths filed for bankruptcy. In Switzerland the country's biggest bank, UBS, is reportedly planning to axe up to 10,000 more jobs as early as next week as it struggles to regain profitability – and credibility. [G]

9/4/09 Interest rates: Bank of England holds at 0.5% as quantitative easing continues It was likely to take another two months to reach its £75bn target of so-called quantitative easing, the Bank said. The Bank of England's monetary policy committee ... left interest rates on hold for the first time since last September while continuing with its policy of kickstarting the economy with £75bn of new money. The monetary policy committee said after its latest monthly meeting ... that Bank Rate would remain at a record low of 0.5% — the decision expected after governor Mervyn King said last month that it was "very unlikely" that interest rates would be cut again. [G]

9/4/09 Weak pound helps exports A big jump in exports on the back of the weaker pound has triggered a sharp drop in Britain's trade deficit with countries outside the European Union, while there are signs that cost pressures in industry are easing, suggesting some relief for hard-pressed manufacturers. [G]

30/3/09 Green spending in UK economic rescue package 'negligible' UK government's fiscal stimulus package is a missed opportunity, says New Economics Foundation, as less than 1% of anti-recession spending goes on environment. Britain's economic rescue package contains "neglible" spending on green measures, campaigners claimed in a report published today. Just 0.6% of the government's stimulus package will help develop a low-carbon economy, said the New Economics Foundation. The report contrasts the £120m promised funding for the green economy with the £775m bonuses paid to staff at the Royal Bank of Scotland and £2.3bn handed to the car industry. Gordon Brown has claimed that around 10% of the stimulus package is directed towards "environmentally important technologies". [G]

30/3/09 The G2 interview: Decca Aitkenhead meets Nicholas Stern 'We're the first generation that has had the power to destroy the planet. Ignoring that risk can only be described as reckless' ... Since publishing the Stern Review in 2006, the professor has become the global authority on climate change. Commissioned by Gordon Brown, his study of the economics of climate change shifted the debate away from polar bears and unseasonal summers, and reframed it in the cold hard language of the balance sheet. Unless we invested 1% of global GDP per annum in measures to prevent climate change, the review warned, it would cost us 20% of global GDP. Suddenly, the CBI and the Institute of Directors were paying attention. It was a defining moment for the credibility of a movement once belittled as too counter-culture to be taken seriously. Stern became the grey hero of the greens - powerful precisely because he seemed such an improbable eco warrior. [G]

26/3/09 An economic bestiary Macroeconomists need to apply some new lessons and relearn some old ones. NO TWO economic crises are identical. But the same questions recur. How did we get into this mess? How can we get out of it? How do we avoid another? Some answers repeat themselves too. You can be pretty sure that sooner or later someone, quite possibly an anguished economist, will declare that economics itself has gone astray. The wisdom of some past master, whether celebrated (John Maynard Keynes, for example) or neglected (Hyman Minsky, perhaps), has been forgotten, and the economy is paying the price. [Economist]

24/3/09 Deflation returns to UK after nearly 50 years Deflation raises fears for pay deals as falling interest rates and house prices, plus lower energy costs, push retail prices index below zero. Deflation will officially return to Britain ... after an absence of nearly 50 years, when government data is expected to show that the retail prices index – the country's broadest measure of inflation – has turned negative. After the indicator barely scraped over zero to 0.1% in January, another month of tumbling interest rates, collapsing house prices, and lower gas and electricity charges is expected by economists and City experts to have pushed February's figure to about -0.8%. [G]

18/3/09 Unemployment surges through 2m Unemployment has risen through the 2 million mark on the widest measure of joblessness while the claimant count has suffered its biggest jump on record. The Office for National Statistics ... confirmed that unemployment rose to 2.029 million in the three months to January - the highest in 12 years - a rise of 165,000 from the previous quarter. [G]

18/3/09 UK faces worse recession than US and Europe, IMF warns The government's handling of the economic crisis has come under fire again after the International Monetary Fund warned that the UK will suffer a longer recession than other major countries. The latest economic forecasts from the IMF, which come as unemployment today surged through the 2 million mark, show that the UK economy will contract by 3.8% this year - a much more severe slump than the government has admitted. The IMF also predicted that Britain will be the only country to keep shrinking through 2010. [G]

18/3/09 Consuming nations should pay for carbon dioxide emissions, not manufacturing countries, says China Tough stance on responsibility for emissions could be crucial obstacle to US agreement on climate change in December. China wants consumer countries to take responsibility for the carbon emissions generated in the manufacture of goods, not the producer countries that export them, according to its top climate change negotiator. The tough bargaining position set out by Li Gao, whose country is now the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, looks set to be a major hurdle for the Obama administration and other developed nations as they seek to find common ground ahead of a crucial UN climate change meeting in Copenhagen in December. [G]

12/3/09 Global warming 'will be worse than expected' warns Stern Economist says his 2006 groundbreaking report underestimated risk and accuses governments of not being ready for consequences of 6C temperature rise [G]

12/3/09 Time to change 'climate change' [George Monbiot] What's clear from Copenhagen is that policymakers have fallen behind the scientists: global warming is already catastrophic. The more we know, the grimmer it gets. Presentations by climate scientists at this week's conference in Copenhagen show that we might have underplayed the impacts of global warming in three important respects: Partly because the estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) took no account of meltwater from Greenland's glaciers, the rise in sea levels this century could be twice or three times as great as it forecast, with grave implications for coastal cities, farmland and freshwater reserves... [G]

12/3/09 Europe 'will be hit by severe drought' without urgent action on emissions Southern England would be badly affected – while Spain, Portugal, southern Italy, Greece would turn into semi-desert... Rachel Warren, a climate expert at the University of East Anglia, who presented the new research to a global warming conference in Copenhagen today, said: "We are looking at enormous increases in drought over the 21st century, particularly in the south." [G]

10/3/09 Lovelock labels Europe's carbon trading scheme a 'scam' Gaia scientist joins former minister Michael Meacher in saying 'disastrous' scheme has profited industry but not helped to reduce emissions. Europe's carbon trading scheme has proved to be "disastrous" and a "scam" in which companies have profited with no effect on emissions, a leading politician and a scientist said yesterday. [G]

6/3/09 IMF: Fifth of Britain's GDP spent so far on bailouts Alistair Darling has already spent almost a fifth of Britain's GDP on bailing out its shattered banking system – more than any other major economy, according to a grave assessment of the world financial crisis published today by the International Monetary Fund. [G]

6/3/09 Rush to buy government bonds UK government bonds soared for a second day ... after the Bank of England unveiled plans to buy billions of pounds of assets to kickstart the economy. Fund managers and speculators rushed to buy government bonds, known as gilts, driving up prices before the launch of the Bank's quantitative-easing programme next Wednesday. The June gilt future jumped by nearly three full points, extending ... [the] rally. [G]

5/3/09 The future of capitalism The credit crunch has destroyed faith in the free market ideology that has dominated Western economic thinking for a generation. But what can – and should – replace it? Over the coming weeks we will conduct a wide-ranging debate on this dominant political issue of the day. [FT]

5/3/09 So much for capitalism The opening up of China’s economy goes into reverse. FOR two decades, in the 1980s and 1990s, China pushed forward a series of economic reforms that came at a vast cost, exceeded only by their vaster rewards. Now, as the financial crisis sweeps across the world, those reforms are going into reverse. It is a sign of how hard governments find it to shake off the habit of ownership. When China began to extract production from the hands of the state, big firms were broken up, reconfigured or closed. Ever so slowly, the government began to privatise its largest industries, selling slices of companies in public offerings on foreign exchanges, and making them adopt at least the pretence of modern governance. How far China has gone in transforming its economy is a matter of debate. [Economist]

4/3/09 Bank of England ready to pump money into UK economy The Bank of England is expected to reduce interest rates to yet another record low ... ; but with their rate-cutting ammunition all but exhausted, governor Mervyn King and his colleagues are expected to press the button on a much more drastic policy — quantitative easing. [G]

25/2/09 Depression in the east points the way for the rest of the world Anybody who doubts that the global economy is facing its most serious downturn since the 1930s should take a squint at the latest trade figures from Japan. Exports in January were 46% lower in January than they were a year ago – a phenomenal drop for a country that is so heavily dependent on sales of its industrial products overseas. [G]

19/2/09 It's a big number – but how much does it matter? Big numbers always sound like big trouble and ... news that up to £1.5tn is to be added to the national debt certainly qualifies as a big number, and then some. The national debt is currently running at £700bn, or 48% of national income ... The Office for National Statistics says it can for now only roughly estimate the total liabilities of Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds, such is their complexity. But it thinks that in a few months its estimate will come to between £1tn and £1.5tn. To put that in context, the economy produces about £1.4tn of goods and services every year. In the worst case, the national debt could run to a total of £2.2tn, or over 150% of GDP, from under 50% now. But how real is the number and does it really matter? [G]

18/2/09 Bank of England gives full support to printing money Policymakers at the Bank of England voted unanimously earlier this month to start the process of quantitative easing by buying gilts and other securities. Minutes for the Bank's monetary policy committee's February meeting, published this morning, showed that all nine members of the MPC agreed that the Bank needed to act now to try and get credit moving through the UK economy again. [G]

11/2/09 Nicholas Stern: Spend billions on green investments now to reverse economic downturn and halt climate change Governments across the world must commit to hundreds of billions of pounds in green investments within months in a combined attack on the global economic crisis and global warming, according to leading economists including Nicholas Stern. The team says some $400bn (£277bn) should be channelled to support low-carbon technologies such as home insulation and renewable energy. Given the urgency of both the economic and climate crises, it wants the green investment made by this summer and to total 20% of the £1.4tn likely to be spent globally as fiscal stimulus. [G]

11/2/09 Britain in 'deep recession', warns King The Bank of England is prepared to cut interest rates below 1% and use "unconventional measures" to dig the economy out of the "deep recession" that it failed to spot six months ago, the governor of the Bank of England said today. Mervyn King said Threadneedle Street would use the "full range of instruments at its disposal" to counter the impact of the credit crunch and a collapse in confidence. [G]

30/1/09 Japan heads for worst recession since second world war Japan could be heading for its worst recession since the second world war after figures released ... showed industrial output fell almost 10% last month and unemployment rose at its fastest pace for more than 40 years. Production fell 9.6% in December, the trade ministry said, surpassing November's huge drop by more than one percentage point. [G]

30/1/09 US economy slows at fastest pace in 26 years The American economy shrank at its fastest pace since 1982 during the final quarter of last year amid a worsening slump in activity described as a "disaster" by president Barack Obama. The US commerce department said gross domestic product, which measures total output of goods and services, plummeted at an annualised rate of 3.8% in the three months to December. Consumption of durable goods such as cars and furniture plunged by 22.8%. Overall consumer spending dropped 3.5%. [G] see also Even worse than it looks [Economist]

29/1/09 Global recession - where did all the money go? Interactive illustration of the towering inverse pyramid, and the quantity theory of money [G]

22/1/09 Greed—and fear: A special report on the future of finance The golden age of finance collapsed under its own contradictions. Edward Carr asks why it went wrong and what to do next... When the financial system fails, everyone suffers. Over the past 22 months the shock has spread from American housing, sector by sector, economy by economy. Some markets have seized up; others are being pounded by volatility. Everywhere good businesses are going bankrupt and jobs are being destroyed. For the first time since 1991 global average income per head is falling. Even as growth in emerging markets has come to a halt, the rich economies look set to shrink. Alan Greenspan, who as chairman of America’s Federal Reserve oversaw the boom, calls the collapse “a once-in-a-half-century, probably once-in-a-century type of event”. Financial markets promised prosperity; instead they have brought hardship... In 2006 America’s current-account deficit peaked at 6% of its GDP (see chart 1). Between 2000 and 2008 the country received over $5.7 trillion from abroad to invest, equivalent to over 40% of its 2007 GDP. Over the same period Britain and Ireland absorbed around a fifth of their 2007 GDPs and Spain a vast 50%. The financial system had the job of recycling the money to borrowers. Inevitably, credit became cheaper and savings declined. In America savings fell from around 10% of disposable income in the 1970s to 1% after 2005. [Economist]

21/1/09 Unemployment leaps closer to 2 million The wave of grim economic news continued ... as unemployment climbed closer to two million, bringing the total to the highest level since September 1997. As news emerged of hundreds more job cuts in the manufacturing and retail sectors, figures showed that the number of people out of work in the three months to November jumped by 131,000 to a total of 1.923 million – a rate of 6.1%. [G]

15/1/09 ECB cuts eurozone interest rate to 2% The European Central Bank today responded to growing evidence that the economic recession is deepening by cutting interest rates to 2% from 2.5%. Its widely expected move, agreed unanimously, came amid growing fears that the 16-strong eurozone could implode as a result of widening divergences and experience a short period of deflation. [G]

15/1/09 China becomes world's third largest economy China overtook Germany to become the world's third largest economy yesterday after revising its figures for output growth. The Chinese economy has grown tenfold in three decades and grew 13% rather than 12% in 2007, Beijing said, putting it behind only the United States and Japan in terms of gross domestic product. [G]

13/1/09 Britain's trade deficit widens to new record Britain's goods trade deficit with the rest of the world widened to a record level in November in a sign that the sharp falls in the pound have so far failed to boost exports as hoped. The Office for National Statistics said the trade gap grew to £8.3bn in November from October's downwardly revised £7.63bn, the biggest since records began in 1697 and nearly a billion pounds worse than economists had expected. [G]

8/1/09 Bank of England cuts base rate to 1.5% The Bank of England's monetary policy committee (MPC) has cut interest rates by half a percentage point to 1.5% – their lowest level since the central bank was founded more than 300 years ago. [G] see also UK enters uncharted territory as Bank of England cuts rates to all-time low [G]

7/1/09 Businesses press for 1% cut in Bank rate as service sector continues deep decline Business organisations are demanding another one percentage point cut in interest rates from the Bank of England on Thursday after a key survey showed the country's dominant services sector had suffered another awful month. [G]

5/1/09 Banks defy Brown call to free up credit Loans for business increasingly scarce and outlook bleak, says report. Britain's banks are defying the government by starving businesses and households of loans and warning that credit will become even scarcer in the first three months of this year. A Bank of England survey found that in spite of Gordon Brown's call for more loans, lenders had further reduced the amount of credit available in the last three months of 2008 and warned that they planned to continue to pare back. Banks and building societies are being deterred from lending by the worsening economic outlook and the fall in house prices and other assets against which loans are secured. [G]

30/12/08 The euro at ten: Testing times Europe’s currency has been more successful than sceptics expected, but it now faces its stiffest test. THE European Union is entitled to crow as it marks this week’s tenth birthday of the euro. Remember the sceptics (especially in Britain and America) who confidently predicted that the single currency would never happen; or that, if it did, it would soon fall apart? And the traders who, in the euro’s feeble early months, called it a “toilet currency”? Today the euro is well-established and strong—so much so that it is widely seen as a haven from the world’s storms. [Economist]

30/12/08 Diagnosing depression What is the difference between a recession and a depression? THE word “depression” is popping up more often than at any time in the past 60 years, but what exactly does it mean? The popular rule of thumb for a recession is two consecutive quarters of falling GDP. America’s National Bureau of Economic Research has officially declared a recession based on a more rigorous analysis of a range of economic indicators. But there is no widely accepted definition of depression. So how severe does this current slump have to get before it warrants the “D” word? [Economist]

18/12/08 30-year journey from Mao to the market Exactly three decades ago, reformers began transforming a poor, isolated country into a powerhouse. But the slowdown and wealth divide are putting its stability under threat. [G]

17/12/08 Meet the Austrian school What if we needed a recession to fix the excesses of the economy? Over the past 40 years, we've become used to the idea that recessions arise when inflation gets out of control and interest rates have to be raised high, slowing down inflation but also costing output and unemployment. But not this time. This time we're having a different sort of recession, widely attributed to a "credit cycle" – ie to a period of excessive lending followed by a sudden dearth in lending. That has led to a renewed interest in a rather unfashionable strand of economics, the "Austrian school". [G] cf to Faith. Belief. Trust. This economic orthodoxy was built on superstition

17/12/08 Federal Reserve slashes interest rates to nearly zero The Federal Reserve slashed interest rates in the United States ... to 0.25% – the lowest level in the nation's 232-year-history – and signalled new emergency steps to boost lending as it sought to lift the world's biggest economy out of a deepening recession. [G]

17/12/08 Unemployment heads over 1 million Unemployment in Britain has surged at its fastest rate since 1991, taking the total number of people claiming jobless benefits to over 1 million for the first time in seven years, adding to the increasingly bleak outlook for the economy.[G]

12/12/08 Germany: the new dirty man of Europe The new emissions agreement is a disaster. Angela Merkel is prepared to go green only when it doesn't hurt big business [George Monbiot]. So much for the Europeans leading the way on climate change. Even as our governments claim they want to drag the world into an effective climate agreement in Poznan, they have just pulled Europe out of one in Brussels. The agreement they have just reached is a disaster. The 20% carbon cut they promise by 2020 falls miles short of what's needed, and they'll be able to buy most of it from abroad anyway. All this means, in a world which has to eliminate most of its carbon pollution, is that other countries, which have sold their easiest reductions to us, will then find it harder to make emissions cuts of their own. It's carbon colonialism, in which Europe picks the low-hanging fruit in developing countries, leaving them with much tougher choices later on. European governments have also junked their commitment to turn the Emissions Trading Scheme into a fair and effective way of cutting pollution. [G]

11/12/08 Architect of Bank's historic interest rate cuts turns his back on committee Academic heads for exit after winning year-long monetary policy argument. Professor David "Danny" Blanchflower has decided not to renew his tenure on the Bank of England's monetary policy committee when his three-year term expires next May. His departure, announced by the chancellor, Alistair Darling, hit sterling yesterday because markets think Blanchflower is the only MPC member who saw the recession coming - he has spent all this year urging reluctant colleagues to make big cuts to the Bank's interest rates. [G] see also UK inflation expectations plummet [G]

10/12/08 Sustained speculative attack sends pound to record low against euro The most sustained speculative attack on the pound since Britain was ejected from the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 sent sterling to its lowest ever level against the European single currency ... Fears that the UK will suffer a long and painful recession to match any of the three big downturns since the Second World War helped push sterling to €1.1391 - and prompted concerns that further heavy selling could result in the exchange rate falling to parity over the coming months. [G]

10/10/08 Wetter and wilder: the signs of warming everywhere In the third part of our series on the eve of the Poznan conference, we look at how climate change is already changing ordinary people's lives from Australia to Brazil ... As UN negotiations towards a global climate deal continue in Poznan, Poland, this week, evidence is emerging of weather patterns in turmoil and the poorest nations disproportionately bearing the brunt of warming. While rich countries at the talks seek to set up global carbon trading, using financial markets to tackle - and profit from - climate change, poor countries want justice. They are seeking environmental justice: money to adapt their economies to climate changes they did not cause, and technology and resources to allow them to escape poverty while preserving their forests and ecosystems. [G]

9/12/08 Too late? Why scientists say we should expect the worst As ministers and officials gather in Poznan one year ahead of the Copenhagen summit on global warming, the second part of a major series looks at the crucial issue of targets... Despite the political rhetoric, the scientific warnings, the media headlines and the corporate promises, he would say, carbon emissions were soaring way out of control - far above even the bleak scenarios considered by last year's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Stern review. The battle against dangerous climate change had been lost, and the world needed to prepare for things to get very, very bad. [G] see also Climate change: The carbon atlas New figures published today confirm that China has overtaken the US as the largest emitter of CO2. This interactive emissions map shows how the rest of the world compares. Global C02 emissions totalled 29,195m tonnes in 2006 – up 2.4% on 2005. [G]

9/12/08 EU agrees 2020 clean energy deadline Green lobby and politicians hail agreement to use 20% renewables within 12 years as climate change landmark. EU leaders today agreed to combat climate change by ordering a fifth of Europe's energy mix to come from renewable sources within 12 years. The agreement, hailed as "landmark" deal and a breakthrough by politicians and the green lobby alike, came ahead of a crucial EU summit on Thursday, at which 27 prime ministers and presidents aim to finalise the ambitious package to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020. [G]

9/12/08 UK recession could be deeper than feared, official data shows Britain's economy may be deeper in recession than previously thought after official data showed that industrial output plummeted at the fastest rate in nearly six years in October, with previous months also weaker than estimated. [G]

8/12/08 Planet under pressure This week, ministers and officials gather in Poznan at the start of a one-year countdown to the Copenhagen summit, at which experts say a deal must be reached if we are to have a chance of averting catastrophic warming. Today, in the first of a major series, we look at the crucial question: will China and the US sign up? ... The negotiation that will climax in Copenhagen is the first attempt to reach a meaningful international agreement on climate change since the Kyoto protocol in 1997, the first phase of which expires in 2012. Analysts say a new agreement is needed by the end of next year for it to enter into force in 2012, to give countries a couple of years to ratify the new treaty. [G]

8/12/08 Will Keynes save the world again? The statistics become ever grimmer but any remedy requires patience. The economic news last week was remorselessly grim from every corner of the globe. Factory output in Spain was down 12.8% in the 12 months to October; November's new car sales in China were 10.3% lower than in the same month in 2007, perhaps helping to drive BMW sales down 25.4% last month. In the UK, the first three working days of each month sees the release of surveys detailing the health of manufacturing, construction and services. Although their track record is not especially long, all registered record lows this month. It's a similar story on the other side of the pond. The world's biggest economy shed 533,000 jobs last month, and 1.25m in the past quarter. The sheer size of these falls in activity and their geographical spread explain why policymakers have hit the panic button. [G]

6/12/08 We all go together when we go The first great financial crisis of the 21st century has begun. Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman explains how it happened, and how it can be cured. I'm tempted to say that the crisis is like nothing we've ever seen before, but it might be more accurate to say that it's like everything we've seen before, all at once: a bursting real estate bubble comparable to what happened in Japan at the end of the 80s; a wave of bank runs comparable to those of the early 30s; a liquidity trap in the US, again reminiscent of Japan; and, most recently, a disruption of international capital flows and a wave of currency crises all too reminiscent of what happened to Asia in the late 90s. [G]

4/12/08 Bank of England concerned about cutting too far, too fast Having sat on its hands in the summer while the economy was heading smack into the biggest recession in three decades, the Bank of England is now making up for lost time. Today's one-point cut in interest rates brings them down to 2% - a rate not seen for 57 years - and represents a 60% drop in official borrowing costs since early October. [G]

3/12/08 US service sector sheds 250,000 jobs in a month More than 250,000 private sector workers in the US lost their jobs in November, according to new figures from the Institute of Supply and Management (ISM). As the credit crunch further takes its toll on the country's already fragile economy, the ISM's employment index plunged to a record low of 31.3 last month, from 41.5 in October. Any mark below 50 signifies a contraction as opposed to growth. [G] see also UK service sector declining at record rate [G]

2/12/08 Leading firms announce more than 2,000 job cuts ... The latest monthly snapshot of the manufacturing sector from the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply showed the worst activity reading since records were first kept in 1992 and a record low in employment intentions, showing firms are laying off workers in droves. The so-called purchasing managers' index — a broad measure of activity, orders and employment in the sector — plunged to 34.4 last month, much lower than expected and way below the 50 level that divides expansion from contraction. [G]

1/12/08 West's pledge to tackle global poverty has been crowded out by our own crisis Crowding out is the phrase of the moment. It is traditionally part of the esoteric lexicon of the economics profession, but debate is now raging over whether the high levels of public debt required to pay for emergency tax and spending packages will drive up long-term interest rates and so make private investment less plentiful and more expensive. This argument is in its early stages and will no doubt intensify as governments - including the incoming Obama administration in the US - start selling bonds by the bucketful. In one sense, though, crowding out is already here. The financial crisis has so dominated the political landscape in the past 16 months that it has crowded out almost every other issue. [G]

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6/10/08 Faith. Belief. Trust. This economic orthodoxy was built on superstition There is no alternative, went the mantra. Now this corrupt mythology lies in tatters, the crisis of conviction is profound ... how did we get in this mess, and how do we make sure it doesn't happen again? Answering these two questions does not require a crash course in City finance and economics, because this crisis is as much about politics and ideology as anything. If you're pressed for time, the reading list can be very short... Hayek became the founding father of a model of economic management which has brought us to the current crisis; Polanyi, with extraordinary prescience, warned that the crisis would come; he rejected the idea that the market is a "self-regulating" mechanism which can correct itself. There is no "invisible hand" such as the neoliberals maintain, so there is nothing inevitable or "natural" about the way markets work: they are always shaped by political decisions. [G]

2/6/08 The gods of greed They promised economic stability, order and prosperity. But instead the world's bankers have delivered chaos, debt and uncertainty - and then blamed the feeble governments that surrendered control of the global economy to them. In the first of three extracts from their new book [The Gods That Failed: How Blind Faith in Markets Has Cost Us Our Future], Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson explain how the reckless speculation of a super-rich elite has left us all the poorer. [G]

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