Aurelia Butler

Below are details of the policies has Truss proposed during the leadership contest.TAX- Hold an emergency budget and review of government spending – Reverse a 1.25 percentage point rise in payroll tax known as National Insurance. The rise was introduced by Sunak in April to help pay for the health and social care system.- Cancel a planned increase in corporation tax. The tax is due to rise from 19% to 25% from 2023 under plans announced by Sunak in March 2021- Apply a temporary moratorium on environmental and social levies added to consumers’ electricity bills- Not impose any new levies on unhealthy food and ditch plans to restrict multi-buy deals on food and drink high in fat, salt, or sugar- Review the way families are treated by tax authorities, with a view to easing the tax burden when family members are not working in order to care for children or relatives ECONOMY AND DOMESTIC- Review the Bank of England’s mandate without compromising its independence- Create low regulation “investment zones”- Introduce minimum service levels on critical national infrastructure and raise ballot thresholds to limit strike action- Reform mortgage assessments to help those currently renting gain access to the housing market- Scrap home-building targets, incentivise local authorities to build more houses and speed up the planning system- Review how Britain will reach its 2050 net zero target to see how it can be done in a more “market-friendly” way- No new Scottish independence referendum.- A six point education reform package, including measures to cut childcare costs- Temporarily expand seasonal workers scheme to ensure farmers have access to labour- Tackle violence against women and girls including criminalising street harassment INTERNATIONAL – Increase defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030- Make Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelenskiy the first foreign leader she calls as prime minister, and work with G7 allies to provide more lethal and humanitarian aid for Kyiv- Commit Britain to a lead role in a “new Marshall Plan” for Ukraine- Update Britain’s foreign policy to include new focus on China and Russia- Seek a trade deal among Commonwealth members to act as a bulwark against China- Scrap all remaining European Union laws that still apply in Britain by 2023, including Solvency II regulation and seek regulatory divergence from the EU – Pursue more third country immigration processing partnership schemes, similar to the existing agreement to send some migrants to Rwanda. More

FRANKFURT/MADRID/LONDON (Reuters) – European banks are hoping the boost to their businesses from higher interest rates will be long-lasting as they navigate the economic fallout of war, soaring inflation, and a looming energy crisis.The German lender Commerzbank (ETR:CBKG) on Wednesday reported a bigger-than-expected second-quarter net profit that it said was especially helped by higher interest rates.Exhibiting a trend seen across Europe, Commerzbank’s net interest income jumped 26% in the period from a year earlier as longer-term interest rates rose in Germany and as the central bank in Poland, where it has a big presence, hiked official borrowing costs.Manfred Knof, the bank’s chief executive, described “considerable” risks on the horizon, but singled out interest rates as a “bright spot”.For years, bank executives on the continent have bemoaned the European Central Bank’s ultra-low monetary policy and charging of fees to park their cash as a drag on their bottom lines.But now, central bank efforts to arrest runaway inflation rates across Europe are proving a change of fortune. Banks from Spain to Britain are only just starting to benefit from the increased gap between what they charge borrowers and what they pay savers. “Higher interest rates will strongly benefit all European banks’ net interest margins and overall profitability, but the effect will be gradual and will vary between countries,” Moody’s (NYSE:MCO) said in a recent report. Moody’s pointed to banks in Spain, Italy and Portugal as among those that will in particular profit from higher rates because more bank loans there are variable rate, giving lenders a “more pronounced increase in bank revenues”.The higher income is bolstering executives’ confidence about revenue, even as European officials cut growth forecasts amid soaring inflation and business activity contracts.In Spain, Bankinter raised its guidance for net interest income from a low single-digit to a mid-to-high single-digit percentage growth for 2022, and Banco Sabadell made a similar upgrade. Big British lenders including HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group (LON:LLOY) and NatWest raised their forecasts for 2022 when reporting first half earnings over the last week, citing rising interest rates which are boosting lending margins.Higher rates drove profits at Italy’s top two banks Intesa Sanpaolo (OTC:ISNPY) and UniCredit above market expectations in the second quarter.Even banks in Germany, where stiff competition has depressed profits for the industry for years, are set to benefit with 11 billion euros in increased revenues in 2023 as a result of higher interest rates, according to a recent study by PricewaterhouseCoopers. That’s a significant figure, representing more than five times last year’s annual profit of Deutsche Bank (ETR:DBKGn), the country’s largest lender. Commerzbank and rates: https://graphics.reuters.com/EUROPE-BANKS/myvmnennjpr/chart.png Commerzbank reckons on earning at least 300 million euros more in additional interest income this year compared with 2021, rising to 800 million more in 2024. That compares with analyst expectations of total revenues of 9 billion for this year.But the ultimate benefit is still unclear. “We don’t yet know how customers will react after many years of ultra-low rates,” Commerzbank Chief Financial Officer told journalists.In the case of Commerzbank, as with other banks, the tailwind will only partly counteract hits from potential writedowns for corporate loans that turn sour if energy sources dry up. The bank sees provisions and writedowns of 700 million euros this year, up from 570 million last year. More

The IMF has urged European governments to pass on rising energy costs to consumers to encourage “energy saving” and a shift towards greener power while protecting poorer households.European governments which have tried to shield households from soaring costs with price controls, tax cuts and subsidies “should allow the full increase in fuels costs to pass to end users to encourage energy saving and switching out of fossil fuels”, the assistant director in the IMF’s European department said.Writing in an IMF blog post on Wednesday, Oya Celasun added that at the same time governments should put relief measures in place to support low-income households — which are least able to cope with spiking energy prices — as “a priority”.Energy consumer prices are rising at an annual rate of nearly 40 per cent in the eurozone and 57 per cent in the UK, reflecting the surge in wholesale gas and oil prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That is drastically eating into households’ disposable income. Poorer households, which spend a larger share of their money on electricity and gas, are particularly hard-hit.As a result, the IMF urged a government policy shift from broad-based support measures to targeted relief. The existing measures include energy price caps in France, Spain and Portugal, electricity tax cuts in Germany and the Netherlands, energy subsidies in Italy and Greece and energy allowances in Germany and the UK. However, “with fossil fuels likely to remain expensive for some time, governments should let retail prices rise to promote energy conservation while protecting poorer households,” said Celasun.The existing broad-based support measures not only delay the needed adjustment to the energy shock, but they also keep global energy demand and prices higher than they would be otherwise, the IMF warned.In many countries, the cost of combating the rising price of energy will exceed 1.5 per cent of economic output this year owing to broad price-suppressing measures, the IMF estimated. This is more expensive than fully offsetting the increase in the cost of living for the poorest 20 per cent of households, which the IMF estimated at about 0.4 per cent of gross domestic product on average for 2022. Andrew Kenningham, economist at Capital Economics, predicted that European governments would move towards more targeted support in the coming months “simply because the costs of universal energy subsidies will become prohibitive”.The IMF singled out the UK along with Estonia, where living costs for the poorest 20 per cent of households are expected to rise by about twice as much as the cost for the wealthiest.Celasun also said that since prices were expected to remain high for several years, “the case for supporting businesses is generally weak”.

It was “appropriate” for governments to support companies during a shortlived price surge, as that could otherwise cause viable businesses to fail, she said. This would particularly be the case if Europe faced a complete cut-off of gas flows and countries had to temporarily ration gas to industry.However, she added that in most cases it was difficult to implement a well-targeted support scheme without introducing distortions and blunting the incentives for energy conservation.Kenningham noted that the IMF offered only limited support for one-off windfall taxes on electricity producers but said he thought “the case is very strong where companies are making exceptional profits due to the marginal-pricing system”. More

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s government on Wednesday withdrew a controversial data protection and privacy bill which was first proposed in 2019 and had alarmed big technology companies such as Facebook (NASDAQ:META) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL), announcing it was working on a new comprehensive law.The 2019 law had proposed stringent regulations on cross-border data flows and proposed giving the Indian government powers to seek user data from companies, seen as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stricter regulation of tech giants.A government notice said the decision came as a parliamentary panel’s review of the 2019 bill suggested many amendments, leading to the need for a new “comprehensive legal framework”. The government will now “present a new bill,” the notice added.India’s junior IT minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) the new planned framework will adhere to global standards, adding that privacy was a fundamental right of Indian citizens and that the economy required such cyber laws.The 2019 privacy bill was designed to protect Indian citizens and establish a so-called data protection authority, but it had raised concerns among Big Tech giants that it could increase their compliance burden and data storage requirements. (https://reut.rs/3JyJGld)”It is good that there will be a redraft from scratch,” said Prasanto Roy, a New Delhi-based consultant who closely tracks India’s technology policy. “However, India still has no privacy law in sight. That’s leaving data regulation open to a wide variety of sectoral regulations, something a common privacy law could have harmonised.”CONCERN OVER DATA MISUSE India says such regulations are needed to safeguard the data and privacy of citizens. Lawmakers have said that concerns about misuse of sensitive personal data have risen exponentially in India.Companies including Facebook, Twitter and Google have for years been concerned with many other separate regulations India has proposed for the technology sector, often straining relations between New Delhi and Washington.After India’s privacy law plan of 2019, it also floated new proposals to regulate “non-personal data”, a term for data viewed as a critical resource by companies that analyse it to build their businesses. The parliamentary panel had said such non-personal data should be included in the purview of the privacy bill.The bill also exempted government agencies from the law “in the interest of sovereignty” of India”, a provision privacy advocates at the time said would allow agencies to abuse access.”There were multiple, large concerns earlier. One has to wait and watch whether the new bill is any better,” said Apar Gupta, the executive director at advocacy Internet Freedom Foundation. More

“We still have some ways to go here to get to restrictive monetary policy,” Bullard said in a CNBC interview Tuesday. “I’ve argued now with the hotter inflation numbers in the spring, we should get to 3.75% to 4% this year. Exactly whether you want to do that at a particular meeting or some other meeting is a great question. I’ve liked front-loading. I think it enhances our inflation-fighting credentials.”Federal Reserve presidents including Bullard speaking this week emphasized that inflation at a 40-year high has yet to slow, and pushed back against the perception the central bank was pivoting to a less aggressive phase of tightening monetary policy. Fed Chair Jerome Powell last week cited Federal Open Market Committee forecasts that the Fed would raise rates to 3.4% at the end of the year and 3.8% in 2023.“We’re going to have to see convincing evidence across the board of headline and other measures of core inflation all coming down convincingly before we’ll be able to feel like we’re doing enough,” Bullard said. Later, he added that the Fed will probably have to keep rates “higher for longer” to see a broad-based slowdown in price growth. Markets are pricing in interest-rate cuts as soon as the first half of 2023 and some investors took comments by Powell in last week’s press conference as a sign that the Fed could soon become less aggressive. The Fed raised rates by 75 basis points for a second straight meeting and Powell said another increase of that size would be possible in September. He gave no specific forward guidance and said future rate increases would be depend on data and would be decided meeting by meeting.Bullard said he agreed with Powell’s view that the US was not in a recession, citing strong jobs growth as being more convincing than the two negative quarters of gross domestic product that some see as a sign of a downturn. Bullard said he expects growth in the second half of the year.“We’re not in a recession right now,” he said. “With all the job growth in the first half of the year, it is hard to say that there was a recession.”©2022 Bloomberg L.P. More