Letter to Alistair Darling Monetary Policy 25 April 2008 25 April 2008     The Rt Hon Alistair Darling MP Chancellor of the Exchequer HM Treasury 1 Horseguards Road London SW1A 2HQ     Dear Alistair   I`d appreciate an urgent response to some of the questions which have arisen in the ten percent tax saga plus a comment on the processes. Read more...   Socialist taxation? Monetary Policy 21 April 2008 Here’s how we redistribute taxation as a Socialist Government   The proposed abolition of the 10% income tax band <http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/apr/20/tax.tradeunions> hurts the poor and has quite rightly attracted widespread condemnation. The government claims that the restoration of the 10% band would cost around £7 billion and the predictable response <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7357085.stm> is that we can't afford it. Here are twelve ways that the government can finance the restoration of the 10% income tax band. They can also help the worse-off citizens by raising personal allowances <http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats/tax_expenditures/table1-6.pdf>, which the Treasury's own figures show would cost around £4.3 billion for each 10% increment. Read more...   Robbin' Hood Monetary Policy 21 April 2008 I’m flooded with protests about the abolition of the 10p tax band. They’re right. We are taking from the poor to give to the richer. The compensation via tax credits isn’t and will be fiddly and will produce no gratitude.   Read more...   Letter to Mervyn King Monetary Policy 31 March 2008 31 March 2008     Mervyn King Esq Governor Bank of England Threadneedle Street London EC2R 8AH     Dear Mervyn   We are concerned that the Bank, by its failure to respond to a deteriorating situation by reducing interest rates and boosting liquidity, is losing touch with reality. It either does not understand the situation or puts a desire to stand “unshook amidst a bursting world” before action as a means of sustaining a confidence few now feel.   Read more...   Letter to Mervyn King Monetary Policy 23 January 2008 23 January 2008     Mervyn King Esq Governor Bank of England Threadneedle Street London EC2R 8AH     Dear Mervyn   The Bank should reduce interest rates by one half of one percent this month. That should be as part of a progressive programme of rate reduction to bring British rates to American levels, or preferably below, over the first months of 2008. That programme should be announced now to give a certainty to markets which the Bank`s usual policy of fidgeting rates up and down can`t. Read more...   Letter to Mervyn King November 2007 Monetary Policy 06 November 2007 Dear Mervyn We recommend that the Monetary Policy Committee should reduce its base rate by l% this month. Our last recommendation was for a reduction of one half per cent. This month the reduction needs to be greater because it`s clear that the Bank does not realise either the seriousness of the credit squeeze being imposed on the country or its consequences. Indeed after the Bank’s mistakes in August over liquidity and the Northern Rock there appeared to be a touch of sulky defiance about last month`s refusal to budge or to follow the wiser stance taken by the Fed and the Eurobank. Read more...   Letter to Mervyn King October 2007 Monetary Policy 01 October 2007 Dear Mervyn No point in recriminations about the Northern Rock crisis, though if it dents images of omniscience and demonstrates the virtues of sympathetic flexibility it can serve a useful purpose. Our last submission warned of the need to boost liquidity and to reduce both interest rates on interbank lending (as the Fed did to relieve the constipation of the system) and interest rates generally to relieve the pressures on the borrowing public and particularly on the sub-prime sector in its British form. Read more...   Letter to Mervyn King September 2007 Monetary Policy 03 September 2007 Dear Mervyn September traditionally marks the start of a new political and economic season after August’s hibernation. That makes new thinking appropriate and time for the MPC to listen in a way it hasn’t up to now. The Bank is moving obstinately down the wrong path to higher interest rates and a credit squeeze. This will be applauded by the financial interests which dominate your counsels and who have already applauded your stealthy progress towards ever higher interest rates and who are currently using their platform in our ignorant media to predict confidently that rates will again go on. Read more...   Letter to Mervyn King June 2006 Monetary Policy 06 June 2006 In advance of the next decision on interest rates. Read more...   Letter to Mervyn King January 2006 Monetary Policy 17 January 2006 My monthly letter to the Governor of the Bank of England. Read more...   Letter to Mervyn King August 2005 Monetary Policy 08 November 2005 Dear Mr King The Labour Economic Policy Group recommends that the Bank should continue the progress to lower rates which it began two months ago, by reducing interest rates by one half of one percent this month and indicating that the trend is down and that the Bank will be carrying out further reductions into next year, feeling its way to a lower level of rates to bring British interest rates to a more competitive level than the other advanced industrial countries, rather than keeping them at a higher level as we have for the past few years. Read more...   Letter to Mervyn King July 2005 Monetary Policy 29 July 2005 Dear Mr King This month`s advice of the Labour Economic Policy Group to the Monetary Policy Committee is to reduce interest rates, preferably by as much as two percent to bring them down to the level of other advanced countries, but certainly by a more substantial amount the usual cautious, little by little approach would allow. The reduction, necessary last month, and which would have occurred then had it not been for the London bombings, now needs to be at least doubled to one half of one percent, preferably more. That is less than we think necessary but it would be more acceptable to you and would indicate to the world how serious the softening of the economy is becoming and how great the need for action to boost it. It would also give the necessary signal to markets that rates are on the way down, the pound with them. Read more...   Letter to Mervyn King June 2005 Monetary Policy 01 July 2005 Dear Mr King We have not offered the MPC the benefit of our advice for the last quarter because we discerned correctly that the Bank would not make any change to interest rates in the election period or immediately after. To argue for the necessary reductions would, therefore, have been a waste of our time. Read more...   Letter to Mervyn King June 2004 Monetary Policy 14 June 2004 Dear Mervyn Some commentators are convinced that you will increase interest rates yet again this month. Others argue that the increase it will come later, probably in a month when the Inflation Report is published. Our advice is not just that it would be wrong to increase rates again, because they are already too high, but that you should reduce them. Your duty is to bring British rates into alignment with the rest of the world, and to the lower level now appropriate to the needs of the economy. Read more...   Letter to Mervyn King March 2004 Monetary Policy 15 March 2004 Dear Mervyn King Last month`s surprising and, we feel, misguided decision to increase interest rates once again and move even further out of line with the central banks of the other major economies was a mistake. It`s the more worrying because of what it reveals about the thinking behind Bank strategy. Our recommendation this month is that you should resile from it, take two percentage points off interest rates and bring them into line with the other major economies, hopefully to an intermediate point between the FED and the ECB. Read more...   Letter to Mervyn King February 2004 Monetary Policy 12 February 2004 Dear Mervyn Conventional financial opinion is convinced that the Monetary Policy Committee will raise interest rates. Again. The further assumption is that it will embark on a series of rises throughout the year. We, of course, advise against such an increase which puts you on a slippery slope to a “normal” rate which doesn`t actually exist. It provides a test of how far you and your Committee share the instinctive prejudices and attitudes of the financial interest but an increase now has no other value. On the contrary, we reiterate our advice that you should reduce interest rates by something more than the grudging mini-percentage point movement to which the MPC has become addicted. Read more...   Letter to Mervyn King August 2003 Monetary Policy 07 August 2003 Dear Mr King We will make only a brief submission to this month`s meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee. Last months`s small reduction of interest rates was treated by the media as if it was a great surprise. It shouldn`t have been. The reduction was, in fact, both pathetically small and too long delayed. This month you should take the job you then began further by a 1% cut to be followed by a further reduction soon when the effects of the fall have been assessed. Read more...   Letter to Mervyn King July 2003 Monetary Policy 01 July 2003 Dear Mr King Before we set out the views of the Labour Economic Policy Group for this month`s Monetary Policy Committee meeting, can we first of all offer our congratulations on your accession to the Governorship of the Bank and Chair of the Committee. Read more...   Letter to the Treasury Select Committee January 2003 Monetary Policy 28 January 2003 Dear Dr Ward, In request to your committee`s call for representations on the exchange rate implications of entry to the euro, can we submit this statement of our view, with accompanying evidence in the form of some of our most relevant Bulletins, to the Committee on behalf of the Labour Euro Safeguards Committee. Read more...   Letter to Eddie George December 2002 Monetary Policy 01 December 2002 Dear Eddie We regret that you did not accept our advice, and that of manufacturers, producers and probably the majority of sensible economic opinion, by reducing interest rates last month. Stability is not the outcome of stable interest rates in a declining situation. It comes from sensible adjustments ahead of time rather than driving straight ahead into a bend in the economic road. Read more...   Letter to Eddie George November 2002 Monetary Policy 01 November 2002 Dear Eddie We were disappointed that the Monetary Policy Committee did not reduce interest rates at its last monthly meeting. A reduction is now long overdue. Read more...   Letter to Eddie George October 2002 Monetary Policy 01 October 2002 Dear Eddie The Labour Economic Policy Group does not believe that the Monetary Policy Committee will decide this week to increase interest rates. However, we stick to our strong view that it should reduce them. As you will know from our previous correspondence we think that the reduction should be substantial and that you can, and should, halve the current rate. Read more...   Letter to Eddie George July 2002 Monetary Policy 01 July 2002 Dear Eddie, We hope that the consistency of our recommendations, which have long been for a reduction of interest rates, has impressed you by its relevance to the present situation which would have been less likely to arrive had our advice been followed. Read more...   Letter to Eddie George June 2002 Monetary Policy 01 June 2002 Dear Eddie, In our last letter we sympathised with the Monetary Policy Committee, not so much for the difficulty of the choice they had to make, for what needed to be done was obvious and underlined by our recommendation of a further interest rate reduction. Our sympathy was for the confused indicators on which they had to judge and this month’s indicators are even more difficult to interpret. Read more...   Letter to Eddie George May 2002 Monetary Policy 01 May 2002 Dear Sir Eddie You will have noticed, I know with real regret, that our advice has been lacking for some time. As a result policy has gone a little astray, principally with the decision to raise interest rates. This sent out a series of wrong signals and was construed as a sign that rates are on their way back up. It is time, therefore, to resume our monthly letter of advice to avoid this happening again. Read more...

<< Start < Prev 1 2 Next > End >>

Results 1 - 25 of 43