~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~49~RS~)
Welcome to Stephanomics - this is where I discuss UK and global economics, and how they affect us all
11 hours ago
The Fed is not going to be spooked out of its exit strategy by a few weeks of market jitters. That was one clear message on Wednesday from Chairman Ben Bernanke.
Another unspoken lesson was that from now on countries with different economies are going to need to have different monetary policies as well.
11:23 UK time, Wednesday, 19 June 2013
After the market euphoria which followed his election, it was inevitable that Shinzo Abe would hit a rough patch.
But today's export numbers and other encouraging signs from the real economy suggest that his radical approach is working about as well as anyone might have expected, given the enormous obstacles in its path.
11:50 UK time, Monday, 17 June 2013
G8 leaders meeting in Northern Ireland this week can hardly ignore the ructions in financial markets, though they are not really supposed to do anything about them. These days, the big decisions about the future of the world economy are supposed to be left to the G20.
But when it comes to the global bond market, the real power lies not with the G8, or the G20 - but with the Fed. It's the US central bank that investors will be listening to most closely this week, when it concludes its policy meeting on Wednesday.
12:33 UK time, Wednesday, 12 June 2013
Economists have been scratching their heads to explain why employment has expanded fairly consistently since 2010, while Britain's national output has struggled to grow much at all.
But it turns out we might have solved the "jobs puzzle" a long time ago, if we had looked a bit more closely at what we were all being paid.
22:47 UK time, Thursday, 6 June 2013
"IMF searches soul, blames Europe" - a headline from the Wall Street Journal captures the story rather well.
The International Monetary Fund has looked at its involvement in the eurozone crisis and come to the stunning conclusion that it hasn't gone very well. But, it says "don't blame us - blame those pesky eurozone governments, and their seriously imperfect monetary union."
07:40 UK time, Wednesday, 5 June 2013
If you're not an economist or a bond trader, you might wonder why there should be such a fuss about roughly half a percentage point rise in the interest rates on US 10-year government debt.
It's a reasonable enough question. There are quite a lot of things that matter to people in the markets which need not concern the rest of us at all.
14:42 UK time, Tuesday, 4 June 2013
It's no good crying over lost growth, and Labour is not going to win the economic argument by constantly harking back to the summer of 2010. That is a key message you can take from Ed Balls' big speech on the economy this week.
Commentators have understandably jumped on his admission that Labour will have to squeeze spending too, if it wins back Number 10 in the next few years. There was also that symbolically important gesture, about taxing winter fuel payments going to better-off pensioners.
14:04 UK time, Friday, 24 May 2013
Financial markets wobbled this week in response to a more than 7% fall in Japanese stocks in a single day.
But investors seem now to have decided that the ructions in Japan are more a problem for the Japanese prime minister and his radical economic policies than they are problems for the whole world.
14:49 UK time, Wednesday, 22 May 2013
The IMF were polite in their published verdict on UK policies today - polite, and somewhat nuanced. So much so, that the Fund's deputy managing director had to spell out the implications to journalists in the press conference, a while after the statement was released.
But David Lipton was quite clear: the Fund has been saying for several years that the chancellor might have to slow the pace of deficit cuts if the economy continued to under-perform. In the staff's view, that day has now finally arrived.
14:36 UK time, Tuesday, 21 May 2013
Big internet giants like Apple are going to extraordinary lengths to minimise their tax burden, and voters and politicians are understandably excited about it. But the puzzle for economists is not that big companies now pay so little tax - but why, in a global economy, they are still paying tax on their profits at all.
When I was first studying economics 25 years ago, my teachers were all expecting corporate taxes to disappear.
14:04 UK time, Friday, 17 May 2013
Stephanie added analysis to:
Cost-benefit analyses "discount" the future benefits - a pound of benefit for citizens in 50 years' time is worth a lot less than a pound today.
You could argue that it systematically biases the outcome against projects that will deliver benefits to people for a really long time.
11:48 UK time, Thursday, 16 May 2013
I like high-speed trains. I really do. Every time I travel on a French or German one I wish we had more of them in the UK.
Quite a few economists I know feel the same way. But none that I have spoken to thinks the economic case for HS2 is particularly strong.
15:59 UK time, Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Stephanie added analysis to:
It's good to see the Bank of England governor raising the growth forecast - for once - and talking about a modest recovery.
But he and everyone else had hoped to see this kind of growth several years ago.
15:23 UK time, Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Sir Mervyn King was more direct than usual in his 82nd Inflation Report press conference - which was also his last.
He was also a little more upbeat - to the extent that he was able to say the growth outlook had got slightly better since the last report, for the first time in more than five years.
01:43 UK time, Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Little did anyone know then that he would preside over 81 more of them, first as the Bank's first chief economist, then its deputy governor, and finally as governor. Wednesday sees press conference number 82. Also Sir Mervyn's last.
I wasn't at that first conference. But as a student intern at the Financial Times I did go to the third one, in August of 1993. I remember being suitably awed by my surroundings, and impressed by the then chief economist's willingness to answer our questions and also his apparent desire to explain the Bank's policy rather than simply repeat it.
11:54 UK time, Tuesday, 14 May 2013
For decades, many British politicians who could not agree on anything, when it came to Europe, could at least agree that the single market was a good thing. Not any more.
That is partly a reflection of how UKIP - and the eurozone crisis - have changed the terms of the European debate.
17:44 UK time, Friday, 10 May 2013
There has been encouraging news on the state of the UK recovery in the past few days, suggesting the economy may have gained some momentum in the last couple of months.
You might also be interested to know that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has moved a step closer to revising away last year's double dip recession.
18:30 UK time, Tuesday, 7 May 2013
No-one knows. If anyone asks you about the economic costs and benefits of leaving the European Union, that is almost always going to be the best answer.
It is also the answer to most questions about the economic costs and benefits of staying in. These are not questions that economists or anyone else can give a sensible answer to - not least, because no-one can say with any confidence what the terms of Britain's NON-membership of the EU would be.
17:55 UK time, Thursday, 2 May 2013
"It's like opening the windows in a convertible when the top's already down". That is how one market commentator has described the European Central Bank's (ECB) widely anticipated rate cut: Welcome, maybe, but unlikely to bring a big change in the weather for the periphery economies currently locked in the boot.
The euro rose in value, around the time the rate decision was announced, only to fall through the floor later on during the ECB President's press conference, falling 0.7% against the dollar in not very much time at all.
12:58 UK time, Wednesday, 1 May 2013
Probably the biggest surprise of 2013 so far has been the dogged optimism of the financial markets. When the economic news is good, share prices rise. But when the news is bad, they often seem to go up as well.
It's a puzzle for economists everywhere, and there's no better example than this week's hotly anticipated European Central Bank meeting.
Stephanie has been a reporter at the New York Times (2001); a speech writer and senior advisor to the US Treasury Secretary (1997-2001); a Financial Times leader-writer and columnist (1993-7); and an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and London Business School.
She became BBC economics editor in April 2008.
She has won numerous awards, including the 2010 Harold Wincott Award for online journalism.
Her father was Michael Flanders, of the 1950s and 60s musical comedy duo Flanders and Swann.
She lives in West London with her partner and their two children.
Robert Peston
Business editor
Latest on events, trends and issues in business and finance
Paul Mason
Economics editor, Newsnight
Reports and insight into people, planet and profit
Nick Robinson
Political editor
The latest on what’s going on in and around politics
BBC © 2013 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.
