yesterday’s OBR coronavirus reference scenario has featured prominently in the UK media over the last 24 hours. it has also been widely misinterpreted — it… Read More »The OBR coronovirus reference scenario for the UK – widely misinterpreted by many, including by Rishi Sunak
Save most of our SMEs from failure through 100% guaranteed loans, tailored to revenue loss, followed eventually by grants to cover essential expenditures; by my… Read More »My NIESR policy paper no 15 now published
Here is the link to this Excel workbook
Tomorrow is Easter Friday. Time for a four day break. Some good news on the economic front, the Fed dramatically widening its lending programs with… Read More »‘Never Seen Anything Like It’: Cars Line Up for Miles at Food Banks
The British Chamber of Commerce are in the process of releasing their second survey of the impact of the pandemic lock downs on smaller businesses.… Read More »BCC survey of coronavirus impact on UK smaller businesses … support has been slow to reach those who need it
An uncertain beginning to the $350bn program of loans to US small business, a key part of the $2trn congressional stimulus. Three articles overnight (again… Read More »US small business lending program: a rocky start; UK even rockier
A sobering headline and an instructive study reported in this WSJ article from yesterday (behind paywall, but may be worth paying a low cost two… Read More »“…at Least a Quarter of U.S. Economy Offline” Wall Street Journal
Spot on. Our politicians are failing us. This is from the CEO of a Swiss computer hardware support company, with subsidiaries across Europe including in… Read More »Quote of the day “The backbone of all these economies are SMEs and they need money now. I don’t think politicians are aware of the magnitude of this.”
How do I know it will be a steeper fall than in the 1930s? look at the table below (source Nicholas Crafts and Peter Fearon:… Read More »An inaccurate Financial Times headline “Global economy set for sharpest reversal since the Great Depression” – NO ! the fall will be steeper
The UK chancellor of the exchequer (finance minister) yesterday started filling one of the glaring gaps in the UK’s program of support for business during… Read More »Sunak takes one step in the right direction, but why not further?