'economy' Category

Murdoch Madness?

Posted under Capitalism, economy by Trevor Smith on March 27th, 2010. Leave a Comment »

Let’s get real here. All the main newspapers have invested in their web sites in order to maximise income. Murdoch is just the first to blink and pursue subscription in addition to advertiser income.

Look what happened in the airline industry. Three years ago you had to pay extra to do an on-line check-in with Ryan air. Now you get fined £40 if you don’t. In the meantime, all the check-in desks (and the people who staffed them) have disappeared. Similar cost savings will occur in the news industry, once the market can be moved to the low cost automated delivery of the web.

The Darling Buds may not

Posted under Chancellor, banks, economy, gambling, risk by Trevor Smith on February 25th, 2009. Leave a Comment »

Alistair Darling is to offer guarantees of up to £600 billion to RBS and Lloyds Banking Group. He is asking them to lend out £40B to re-start the economy. Now let me get this right. UK GDP = £2800B, so that is more than a fifth of our gross domestic product that the Chancellor is gambling on our two biggest banks. To put it another way, that is nearly £10,000 for every man, woman and child in the UK. Hmmmm!

All this to promote the new buds of economic growth.