New research for the Tax Justice Network campaign group – sifting through data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and private sector analysts, shows capital flooding out of countries across the world and disappearing into the cracks in the financial system. So what has actually gone offshore? Has this capital been sent out by the shipload?...

Job creationism is alive and flourishing in France, with proposals to reintroduce tax and social contributions on overtime work, thereby reversing a concession introduced under the previous Presidency. How stupid can you get?  FT article

All the decisive actions in the the economy happen at the margin. When big fish like the Confederation of Briitish Industry complain, the government can safely ignore them. This explanation by Mark Wadsworth show why this is so.

Chris Giles writes in the FT: Forget the granny tax, forget the 50p rate of tax and forget the pasty tax. The most important, but least discussed element of last week’s Budget is the continuing evidence of Britain’s underlying economic weakness. We would suggest that the first place to look for a supply-side blockage is the tax system, variously estimated to cost the UK economy between...

The International Labor Organization has published its Global employment trends 2012: preventing a deeper jobs crisis. It tells us that, “The world faces a challenge of creating 600 million jobs over the next decade.” When the phrase “job creation” is mentioned, read no further. Who in their right mind would create a job for themselves? The purpose of work is to satisfy our...

{jumi *5}{/jumi}Robin Smith, interviewed from Occupy London, gives a complete explanation of what is wrong with the economy.

If you were to ask us what we would do in the present state of the economy, our reply would be that we would not have got into this mess in the first place. In the early 1990s, when the Labour Party was developing its policies, we urged its policymakers to implement the system of land value taxation which the Campaign was set up to promote. Let us suppose that Labour had pursued our policies with...

An article in the Financial Times reports that landlords are offering hard-to-let shops at rents of just £1-a-year. With the number of boarded-up shops proliferating on high streets, retail landlords have become desperate to avoid paying business rates on empty units and are happy to sacrifice the rent. Chains such as Dixons and Card Factory have £1-a-year or business-rate-only deals on a handful...

The government is now driving through its proposals to criminalise squatting. We do not condone squatting but there are important principles at stake here.

Job creation On both sides of the Atlantic the traps are being set. The bait? Jobs. The rise in unemployment – 9.1% (14 million) in America and 7.9% (2.5 million) in the UK – is causing concern and delaying economic recovery. Growth is the mantra, growth is the answer to stagnation, economic depression, social problems and deficit reduction. The medicine – job creation.