As the old joke goes, if I was going there I wouldn’t be starting from here. But the starting point for dealing with high energy prices is that we ARE here. The crux of the problem is that the government has underinvested in domestic energy security. It has made fossil fuel investment difficult without creating
In the summer of last year, hopes were riding high that the global economy could quickly return to pre-pandemic levels of output due to the success of the vaccine roll-out and economies gradually opening up again. However, the economic recovery thus far has been marred by stretched supply chains, clogged up ports and sky-high freight costs,
After such a frenetic year, I was quite surprised to read what we had predicted a year ago and realise that we had correctly forecast quite a lot of what happened. Our world economy GDP forecast was within 0.2% which is as close to spot on as you can reasonably expect. Our warning about inflation was
Occasionally you get a week where the news is sufficiently unexpected to revise one’s appreciation of events. The past week has been such. The new news included: a rapid upsurge in Covid cases in the UK, especially from the Omicron variant against a background of increasing travel and other restrictions around the world; a tightening
Last night’s announcement by the Prime Minister that England would move into Plan B over the next week – mandating mask wearing in indoor settings, guidance to work from home (WFH), and vaccine passports for crowded and large venues – doesn’t come without economic costs. Most significantly among the new restrictions, a shift to homeworking
Fed Governor Jerome Powell showed himself to be an impressive operator in his testimony to Congress last week. In his previous testimony on 28 September, he insisted that inflation would fall back to 2%. His 30 November testimony said that it was time to ‘retire the word transitory’ from discussions of inflationary prospects. Markets immediately
4.4 million people quit their job in the US this September providing yet further evidence of the ongoing Great Resignation phenomenon. The quits rate – the number of voluntary separations as a share of total employment – rose to 3.0% in the same month, the highest since the start of the data series in December
The labour market data out in the past week highlighted two facets of official policy: The early post-furlough employment data showed that employment had bounced back with 160,000 more workers added to company payrolls during October. The unemployment rate for the three months to September (when furlough still existed but when its impact on the labour
Four hundred private jets, an 85 car motorcade with President Biden, two of the one hundred Zimbabwean delegates pictured coming out of Costco laden with trolleys full of expensive liquor. It’s easy to be sceptical about COP26. From our few days spent in Glasgow, the great jamboree has certainly lived up to expectations with overpriced
One of the surprises of the Budget was the rise in the Office for Budget Responsibility’s inflation forecast for 2022 to 4% (average across the year) despite frozen fuel duties and a squeeze on some alcohol duties. The figure is in line with Cebr forecasts but until recently officials in both Whitehall and Threadneedle Street
Rishi Sunak is an ambitious man who hopes to be the next Prime Minister. His Budget today is an attempt to steer a course between the prejudices of his boss, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and those of his Department, the Treasury. The essence of Borisism is that the fundamental law of economic gravity, that you
Though his popularity has tumbled in the last year as he has faced the hard choices demanded by the economy, more people still think Rishi Sunak is doing a good job than think he is doing a bad job, according to YouGov’s monthly survey. But he is now facing multiple challenges as he prepares his
An article by Douglas McWilliams for Reaction There is one subject on which both the hawks and doves who disagree over interest rates do agree on: that the Bank of England is making a horlicks of its communications with the outside world, and more pertinently, the financial markets. Over the last week we have heard
The fuel crisis has been plaguing the country for the better part of the past two weeks, leading to hour-long queues at forecourts and frustration among motorists. Triggered by the closure of only a handful of gas stations on 23rd September, the crisis has quickly escalated, as drivers rushed to fill up their tanks. Whilst pressures
View the full report here. Executive Summary Report overview This is a Cebr report for Animal Free Research UK, assessing the economic contributions made by New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) in the UK. The report considers the direct economic contributions made by the UK NAMs sector during 2017-2019 as well as a forecast of its projected
