A policy statement delivered by the US Federal Reserve in Washington might seem utterly remote to someone scrolling through property listings in Manchester, or to a Bristol borrower arranging a new deal on their home loan. Yet our financial system is tightly woven together, so the choices made by Fed Chair Kevin Warsh and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) travel across the Atlantic almost instantly. Anyone weighing up whether to fix now, or simply curious about the next move in British interest rates, needs to grasp how American borrowing costs feed into mortgage lending on this side of the…
Author: David Ashworth
David Ashworth
David Ashworth spent fifteen years in print and digital journalism covering UK news. He started at a regional evening paper in the North West, moved to a national digital outlet, and spent four years as a business and economics correspondent before going freelance. He writes about the economy, public finances, employment, and the corporate news that lands differently depending on whether you read it from a boardroom or a break room. He files on deadline and prefers evidence to opinion. David lives in Lancaster. He reads the ONS releases before most people have read the headlines about them, and considers the lag time instructive.
At an investment firm called Janus, four people spend their days hunting for the next billion-pound business idea. What they actually get is fart-proof underwear, clinical toilets and questionable items of sex furniture, and every promising investment ends in comic disaster. That is the premise of No Big Deal, a British sitcom whose pilot episode went live free on YouTube and can be watched here. The office holds four recognisable types. Derek Tudor is brilliant but unpredictable and cannot keep his thoughts to himself. Lydia de Mabro runs the place in practice, having earned a board seat off the firm’s…