British business, drunk or sober!

Why is it that the establishment doesn't seem to be able to tell the difference between criticising the behaviour o the big banks and being anti-business?  David Cameron's speech yesterday certainly didn't.

In fact, being pro-business and pro-enterprise ought to mean major criticisms of the dysfunctional banks, who are really failing to support productive business, and real action on monopoly power - because that is what UK business needs:

http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/2012/02/24/to-british-business-drunk-or-sober

Pressure growing for a real bank break-up

RBS seems unlikely to be in a fit state to sell off any time soon.  The very least the Treasury should do is investigate whether it might be more profitable, or more beneficial, if it was broken up to create the regional banking infrastructure the UK economy so badly needs:

http://neweconomics.org/blog/2012/02/21/the-pressure-is-growing-for-a-real-bank-break-up

The bank's very own transaction tax

Paying money by mobile phone - it's a good idea, pioneered in Africa, in fact.  But we need to be careful about this, if the big banks are not going to increase their monopolistic strangehold over our payments system:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/16/pingit-mobile-phone-payment

Councils supporting small business? Think again

Why is it that, despite everything, local authorities still have such contempt for small shops and local entrepreneurs?  The result is a fatal addiction to big and ineffective, rather than small and local:

http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/2012/02/15/still-horribly-confused-about-entrepreneurs

Saving Greece from the euro technocrats

How can we save the Greeks from complete economic shutdown, and keep them in the euro?  Answer: give them new kinds of mediums of exchange:

http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/2012/02/13/how-to-save-greece-from-the-technocrats

Don't let them tell you that high streets are dead

A slightly insidious campaign is going on, largely in the pages of the Financial Times, to persuade us that high streets must be allowed to die.  This is dangerous nonsense:

http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/2012/02/08/our-high-streets-have-life-in-them-yet

Saving the Sustainable Communities Act

Only five years ago, the New Economics Foundation commissioned Ron Bailey to draft a bill to tackle Ghost Town Britain.  Now that ghost towns are seriously on the march, it is really no time to water down the Sustainable Communities Act:

http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/2012/02/07/time-to-save-the-sustainable-communities-act