We all now rely so much on debt

The coalition is once again struggling to keep down the size of the deficit and is missing their targets for this year. It is down, of course, from the worrying levels of 2010. But my New Economics Foundation colleague James Meadway has written a very interesting blog...

Towards the next devolution of power

What if Andrew Adonis and George Osborne are right?  What if the key question for re-balancing the economy (not a phrase Adonis used) was to force through a major new devolution of economic power to the city regions? What if Michael Heseltine’s was right in his 2012...

Why the future of regeneration is small

The term ‘inner cities’ seems to have disappeared from the vocabulary of educated debate.  The Guardian itself says so.  Why, given that it dominated political discussion in the 1980s? The answer is, I think, that – certainly in London – the poor don’t live there any...

The wide variety of time banks across Europe

Time banks.  Edgar Cahn launched the first six in the USA in 1987.  Martin Simon launched the first one in the UK at the end of 1998, but you can find them now all over Europe. When I was writing our new report for the European Commission’s research centre on...

Why we need to think about the next crash now

This is cross-posted from New Banking UK Financial regulators have to be adept at shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted – and especially so in England, where decades of persuasion are usually required to persuade politicians that the horse has left the...