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David Blanchflower: How much worse do things have to get before we get action?

Sun, 27 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

For us data watchers, last week was a big one and pretty exciting. Oil and commodity prices continued their downward slide. In the euro area, the PMI flash estimates showed weakening in both services and manufacturing. Perhaps more important still was the flash estimate for Germany, which also implied slowing. To this point, Germany has been an island of growth but as John Donne warned in For Whom the Bell Tolls : "No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less." The less indeed. These data appear to strengthen French President François Hollande's argument that it is time for the Euro area to get a growth plan. Austerity is failing everywhere – not just the UK.

Hamish McRae: Let's focus on positives of foreign workers

Sat, 26 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

If our economy is doing so badly why do so many people come here?

Margareta Pagano: Eurobond or no? The Iron Lady is not for turning

Sat, 26 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

So who's going to win the latest skirmish over a new euroland eurobond? Will it be Mario Monti, Italy's unelected prime minister, who claims he can persuade Angela Merkel, Germany's elected Chancellor, to act for Europe's common good and support a new eurobond to save the eurozone? Or will it be Merkel, the lady with Europe's purse-strings, who is implacably opposed?

Hamish McRae: Let's focus on positives of foreign workers

Sat, 26 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

If our economy is doing so badly why do so many people come here?

Stephen Foley: How much should a start-up’s founder cash in?

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

US Outlook It was startling to have Groupon's head of communications look me in the eye and say, no, I was mistaken, the company's founders had not taken any significant amount of cash out of the business, and Andrew Mason, the chief executive, still has all his net wealth tied up in the success or failure of the email coupons venture he created in 2008.

Stephen Foley: The nun, the merchant banker and a question of corporate ethics

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

US Outlook Nobody mentioned the name Greg Smith, though it is barely two months since the London-based trader quit Goldman Sachs citing a "toxic" culture where clients were regarded as "muppets" to be ripped off wherever possible.

Anthony Hilton: Sorry, but shareholders just don’t have the power

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Executive pay continues to fester.

Anthony Hilton: A financial transactions tax may not be so bad

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

It was interesting to hear the Prime Minister come out so forcefully against a financial transactions tax (FTT) when talking to the media after Wednesday's European summit meeting. It was a bad tax which would destroy competitiveness, weaken pension schemes and destroy jobs he declared, and he would do everything he could to block it.

Anthony Hilton: Facebook flop is really no great surprise. Remember the dot.com debacle?

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

The surprising thing about the embarrassing flop of Facebook is that anyone is surprised. Back in 2000, Michael Lewis, the one-time bond trader turned author, wrote an early expose of what went on in the the dot.com bubble at the turn of the millennium.

Simon English: Ailing Thomas Cook goes green as it decides not to play the Long game

Thu, 24 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Outlook Peter Long probably doesn't openly plot for the demise of Thomas Cook. On the other hand, he may feel that his intervention is hardly proving necessary. The boss of Tui Travel, Cook's far-better-placed arch-rival, is a grizzled industry veteran who has seen it all before twice.

James Moore: Splash out on United Utilities and you'll be singing in the rain

Thu, 24 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

United utilities

Simon English: Are shoots of recovery rooted in £5 pint of lager?

Thu, 24 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Outlook The £5 pint of beer, a horror fleetingly spotted whose existence could never be confirmed, can no longer be dismissed as an urban myth.

Simon English: Safety-first Allianz is hardly earning its money

Thu, 24 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Outlook: When lengthy articles appear in the Financial Times discussing the "end of the equity cult" is that a raging buy signal, a copper plated guarantee that markets are about to soar?

Simon English: Money Chicken in need of a trouble shooter

Wed, 23 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Outlook The Coq d'Argent on Poultry in the City was a fine place for a good few years.

Simon English: What a shame about the Facebook float

Wed, 23 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Outlook It's a terrible pity that the Facebook flotation has turned into such a disaster (removes glasses, grins slyly).

Simon English: Let's not get too misty-eyed, but Nationwide is a national treasure

Wed, 23 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Outlook There aren't many good sides to the banking crisis, but one must be this: at least all those loonies that wanted Nationwide Building Society to become another bank, as if that's just what we needed, have shut their traps and slunk away.

Hamish McRae: Even wealthy Germany can't afford to save the eurozone

Wed, 23 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

The long and winding tale of the eurozone took a new twist yesterday, with money flooding into German bonds, taking their interest rates to the lowest ever, and with the euro extending its fall, reaching the lowest level against the dollar since August 2010.

James Moore: Marc Bolland has a chance to earn that £15m now chips are down

Tue, 22 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

It is easy to understand why M&S went after Marc Bolland when it waved goodbye to Sir Stuart Rose. Mr Bolland had turned Wm Morrison into a lean, mean, fighting machine. His shareholders were probably even willing to forgive those awful ads featuring Alan Hansen.

Margareta Pagano: Talk about an own goal - Adrian Beecroft's 'fire-at-will' plan is just plain daft

Tue, 22 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

What is it with the way government picks its so-called experts to pontificate on big policy decisions? Does it choose these experts by name to match subject?

James Moore: Wonga should be told when it is in the wrong

Tue, 22 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Outlook Wonga.com likes to claim that it is a "responsible lender" which is largely based on the fact that it shamelessly boasts about its usurious interest rates and charges.

James Moore: What's in a name? Yell has to tackle its crisis

Tue, 22 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Outlook Yell has a problem. The stumbling directories business that used to be known as Yellow Pages has become a byword for bad management and bad debt. (It has a mountain of the stuff which needs restructuring. Again.) Not to mention the fact that the internet has presented all sorts of challenges to its business model.

James Moore: HomeServe has no room for boasting when it has so many problems to sort out

Tue, 22 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Outlook If you ever needed an example of why the insurance industry gets it so wrong so often HomeServe's chief executive Richard Harpin provided it yesterday. Some 94 per cent of HomeServe's customers are satisfied with the service, he declared.

James Moore: Bolland has a chance to earn that £15m now chips are down

Tue, 22 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Margareta Pagano: Talk about an own goal - Beecroft's 'fire-at-will' plan is just plain daft

Tue, 22 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

What is it with the way government picks its so-called experts to pontificate on big policy decisions? Does it choose these experts by name to match subject?

James Moore: London's regulators are as scary as a Disney movie with the lights turned on

Mon, 21 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

W asn't financial regulation supposed to have turned over a new leaf? With phrases like "proactive", "intrusive" and "harsh" taking over from "light touch" and "risk based".