One of my favourite jokes is that recessions aren't what they used to be. Call this a recession? You should have been around in the Seventies - inflation at 22%, mortgage rates at 15%, a pay policy which limited increases to £7 a week, a top rate of income tax of 87% - and all this before government finances collapsed and the IMF rescuers demanded a seriously tough austerity programme.... more
Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold. This is a Sicilian coinage and it means exacting vengeance in a cool and emotionally detached way, usually long after the original perceived slight has been committed. Being a Scot, Gordon Brown knows all about revenge... more
This week saw the latest estimates of UK growth in the earlier months of the year which brought forth the usual hand-wringing and cries of woe from the watching economists - with the notable exception of Lombard Street's Jamie Dannhauser... more
War has broken out between Jeremy Heywood, Permanent Secretary at No 10, and his boss, Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, the ultimate Sir Humphrey in Whitehall (he likes to use his initials - "GOD")... more
Anyone wading through the thousands of pages of submissions to Sir John Vickers' Commission on Banking will appreciate this "glossary of terms" floating around the City... more
City Comment: The financial world has been transfixed by the bank bailouts, the deficit, the crisis in Greece and the rest, but that does not mean the rest of the country is sold on the idea that we are just a few months from disaster
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It could be just the bump in the polls that the Tory leader was looking for ... Sarah Sands considers what Sam's pregnancy does for David Cameron... more
City Comment: It is amusing to hear George Osborne warning the Chancellor not to use next week’s Budget for a pre-election bribe, because that is exactly what the Tories did in 1992... more
Lloyds boss Eric Daniels looked distinctly shifty when he did a poor impression of striding purposefully along the road, trying to avoid a BBC cameraman... more
Though Tory leader David Cameron and shadow chancellor George Osborne seem increasingly confused about what to do when in power to tackle the public sector deficit and associated mountain of debt, there is no reason for the rest of us to be in the dark... more
At the great Pick ’n’ Mix counter that passes for proud British business these days, such is the alacrity with which our brands fall to the foreign shopper, it’s time to hand out some awards... more
Gordon Brown faced fresh accusations of "complacency" over the dire state of the economy after a minister claimed there was "light at the end of the tunnel" for Britain's jobless... more
Two of London's wealthiest hedge fund managers paid themselves an estimated £400 million each last year, making them among the world's biggest winners from the credit crunch... more
Tonight:
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