Ooooh! The criminals!

More than £2 billion a year is lost through tax evasion but fraudsters have a “minimal” chance of getting caught, the public spending watchdog will announce today.

The Public Accounts Committee says HM Revenue & Customs are struggling to crack down on the estimated two million people involved in tax evasion. Its report, HMRC: Tackling the Hidden Economy, says that the detection rate was only 1.5 per cent and the penalties imposed were relatively slight.

Yes, yes, I know, in these straightened times no one should be allowed to get away without paying for their share of...

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This actually sounds like a pretty good idea

Manufacturers are ready to press the Government for training and payroll support to prevent the loss of thousands of jobs during the recession.

I do question it a little of course.

They want the Government to copy schemes already operating in other parts of the EU, including Germany and Holland, where state support is provided to enable workers to undergo re-training as an alternative to redundancy.

The basic idea, that decent retraining might be given to those who lose their jobs appeals greatly. Even decent retraining at public expense (which appeals a little less, to be sure).

But I...

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Daily Brief

Last week, when the Wall Street Journal reported that "industry insiders" said Goldman Sachs would report a loss this quarter, the sourcing raised eyebrows. There was ample evidence to conclude that the source of the leak was Goldman Sachs itself, perhaps in an effort to let the market absorb the bad news before reporting its numbers.

Today, the Journal has another scoop, this time about Merrill Lynch chief executive John Thain and the $10 million bonus he's asking the board's compensation committee to approve. "People familiar with the situation" say the committee isn't likely to approve the...

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The case for making bigger cars

I just watched the webcast of Paul Krugman's Nobel Prize lecture (slides here). In it, he laid out his theories of economic geography, which help explain why industries tend to cluster in certain geographical locations.

He ended on a topical note: Detroit. The fact is, he said, that the world as described in his models -- "one of circular logic and agglomeration" -- actually peaked in the 1920s, at least in the US. Since then, the world has become increasingly classical, and while Krugman's theories remain relevant, they're not quite as relevant as they were.

Krugman...

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The benefits of the euro

Yes, of course there are benefits to the use of the euro. A reduction in transaction costs for one. But the point isn't that there are some benefits, nor that there are some costs (loss of interest rate and exchange rate flexibility for example) but what is the balance of them?

A new paper seems to be saying that the benefits are a great deal less than previously estimated:

One of the most important pieces of research used by euro proponents was a paper from Andrew Rose showing that countries which joined currency unions tended to see...

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