Paul Maunders | Web log

You can view the Google Spreadsheet with the raw data here.
Sources

Exchange Rates – Bank of England (GBP:USD XUQAUSS / GBP:EUR XUQAERS)
Real House Prices – Nationwide

The following graph shows the quarterly unemployment rate compared to real house prices. House prices have been adjusted for inflation and are given in 2009 Q1 prices.

Sources

Unemployment rate is from National Statistics Time Series Data – Labour Market Statistics – MGSX: LFS: Unemployment rate: UK: All: Aged 16 and over: %: SA
Real House Price is [...]

So it has happened: these extraordinary times have caused our Government to look to Zimbabwe for economic policy inspiration and so, as of last week, the Bank of England will begin a £150 billion programme of printing money.
Technically referred to as Quantitative Easing, it’s actually a lot easier than printing money, and more environmentally friendly too: the Bank just [...]

For the past 10 years I’ve been undecided as to whether Britain should join the European single currency, the Euro.
At first I was leaning towards the Euro, thinking that a level playing field of prices across Europe would encourage competition, making prices more transparent across a larger market, and therefore bring down prices in [...]

There is an interesting article in this week’s Economist, All you need is cash, which talks about the new rush by businesses to accumulate cash in contrast to the massive leveraging that has taken place over the past few years. Of course, not all companies took on huge loans to expand, and the ones who [...]

Although I’m fundamentally a capitalist, and a strong believer in the power of free markets to allocate capital effectively, I’m not an absolute market libertarian. So whilst I’m convinced that an economy based on competition and creative destruction is far more able to generate productivity growth and technological advance than one that’s centrally planned, I [...]

The ice cream man who comes round our office was speaking to me today and he has raised his prices by 50% to reflect the increases in his whole sale costs. Just another example of rapid inflation.

The Bank of England released it’s quarterly inflation report today, and it paints a pretty gloomy picture. Inflation is set to exceed 3% for most of the rest of the year, obliging the Bank of England’s governor, Mervyn King, to write a series of explanatory letters to the Chancellor.
As part of their report, The [...]