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Adrian Hamilton: Recovery cannot begin until house prices bottom out

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

How can he get away with it? While David Cameron laboriously carries out a U-turn on taxes, the Prime Minister positively somersaults over every position he has ever held and yet seems to get only stronger in the opinion polls. He has abandoned all his golden rules, embraced unfunded tax cuts as the panacea for our recessionary woes and declared the whole thing a global problem in which we are but guiltless victims. Meanwhile, poor old Cameron has to do his manoeuvres in full public glare before an audience who never saw the point of his much-vaunted commitment to keeping Labour's spending plans in the first place, and are just as unmoved by his reversal of it now.

Adrian Hamilton: Don't count on a new Bretton Woods

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Let us assume – because it is now the accepted wisdom – that the world cannot be the same after this credit crunch, that its international institutions will have to be radically revised, that the balance of power has shifted to the East and that a new President of the US opens up whole new world of possibilities of multilateralism.

Adrian Hamilton: Brown's new role as the 'Supermac' of global finance

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Labour insiders have apparently taken to talking of the "Real Brown" and the "Real Brown Premiership" of the past month, to distinguish it from the "unreal" premiership whose star fell so ignominiously in his first year. That, of course, begs the question of just how different the new decisive, "make way-for-the man of experience" Brown is from the indecisive, endlessly inept Prime Minister of the last year. The leopard never changes its spots, nor a middle-aged man his character.

Adrian Hamilton: Asia has little interest in a 'new dawn'

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

In South-East Asia during the past week, what impressed most was not the enthusiasm for the US elections but the lack of it. The campaign barely rated a few pictures and a single column report.

Adrian Hamilton: I wouldn't get too carried away by success if I were Brown

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 23:00:01 GMT

It's not only in the stock markets that shares can rebound with a dramatic rush. Gordon Brown's bounceback has been almost as astonishing as that of the banks he now claims to have saved. And he is right to boast. The Brown package of state-guaranteed loans and direct government shares has become the world standard. Where the US stumbled with a rescue plan rejected in Congress and then savaged by most of the experts and where the EU floundered between the conflicting approaches of an interventionist France and a parsimonious Germany, our Prime Minister stepped up to the plate and scored the home run.

Adrian Hamilton: Cash and foetal

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:14:20 GMT

That was the response of one trader asked by a client what position he should take as markets collapsed round the world this week. Good advice.

Adrian Hamilton: Huge gulf that separates politicians and City

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Politicians and the City never seem to understand each other. You'd have thought they would. They're in the same business, after all, of gaining public confidence (and its money) and masking naked self-interest in the language of consumer benefit.

Adrian Hamilton: The huge gulf that separates politicians and the City

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Adrian Hamilton: It won't be long before the British blame foreigners

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Politicians and bankers still don't get it, on this side of the Atlantic no more than on the other. Out they have trooped – Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, George Osborne and David Cameron – to say that they understand the anger of ordinary people in this crisis.

Adrian Hamilton: A creeping defeatism is overcoming Labour

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:00:01 GMT

"Of course it's all in a bubble here, so one shouldn't exaggerate Brown's success," said an MP cautiously after acclaiming the Prime Minister's speech in Manchester on Tuesday ("definitely 7 out of 10, his best ever at a conference").

Adrian Hamilton: Forget the banks – it's the economy that matters now

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:00:01 GMT

So who's to blame for it all? Is it the bankers with their wild and wicked financial ways? Is it the hedge-fund managers intent on turning a quick buck whatever the cost to the victims? Is it the regulators, who failed to impose disciplines on their financial institutions, or the central banks who encouraged the borrowing spree by keeping interest rates too low for too long, or the politicians who happily gained the benefits of the longest sustained period of growth in a century without asking how it was all being paid for? Or indeed is it the fault of the consumers who all too easily grabbed at the loans being offered, confident that house prices would go on rising for ever?

Adrian Hamilton: Gordon Brown does not deserve this much vitriol

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 23:00:01 GMT

I have in my study at home a savage 19th-century cartoon of a prostrate figure of Napoleon III surrounded by a ring of tormentors representing various London newspapers. The simple caption beneath reads "Motto of the Liberal Press: When a Man's Down, Kick Him."

Adrian Hamilton: The lessons of past economic downturns

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:00:01 GMT

It is a sobering thought that nearly two-thirds (62 per cent to be precise) of the members of Parliament only entered the House of Commons in 1997 or after. In other words, not only have they known no other life than under a Labour government but they have known only the good times in the economy. Indeed it is only a small minority of MPs who can probably remember any of the recessions that Maggie, Major and Harold Wilson all had to endure.

Adrian Hamilton: We need an old approach for the new global politics

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Two presumptions seem to have taken hold of all discussion of the burgeoning crisis over Russia's actions in Georgia. One is that Moscow, by sending in the tanks, has changed the rules of geopolitics and destroyed the post Cold War era of calm and co-operation, as the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, argued in his sabre-rattling speech yesterday in Kiev. The other is that what we're witnessing is a return to the politics of the 19th-century, when empires ruled and great countries thought in terms of spheres of influence.

Adrian Hamilton: It's economics, not politics, that will influence Russia

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Among all the dramatic and doom-laden suggestions this week of how to deal with Russia after Georgia, one of the most naive must be the suggestion that we can somehow separate the politics from the commerce, playing hardball with the one and softball with the other. Tell that to BP. Tell that indeed to the Ukrainians, the East Europeans or the Baltic states in their price negotiations for Russian gas.

Adrian Hamilton: We are still fighting the Cold War

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:00:01 GMT

The brief, brutal war in Georgia is not a victory of the Russians over the West. That is just a schoolboy way of looking at the whole sorry episode. Nor is it, as David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary and would-be Labour leader, would have it, some disgraceful resurgence of Russian imperialism for which they must be punished by withdrawal of international privileges. That is to completely misunderstand the situation on the ground and in the Kremlin.

Adrian Hamilton: It's not all the fault of the banks

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 23:00:01 GMT

It's a year after the credit crunch first burst upon an unsuspecting financial world – never mind the consumers – and still we don't seem to have grasped either its magnitude or its ramifications. That it has led to the biggest collapse in house prices in a generation, both here and in the US, is now apparent to all. That it has led to a crisis in confidence and massive losses in the banking sector is equally obvious. Indeed one of the few silver linings in this grim scene – at least for the consumers – has been the sight of the once mighty "masters of the universe" now brought low by their own ingenuity, of the fat cats and bonus brigands of the new banking scene being forced from their jobs although not, unfortunately, their riches.

Adrian Hamilton: A bitter power struggle for the soul of democracy

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:00:01 GMT

It is almost impossible to exaggerate just how important is the current crisis engulfing Turkey or to say just how grim could be the consequences of the case now being considered by its constitutional court. Within the week, or certainly by the end of next month, Turkey could be without its prime minister, its president and its ruling party. It could indeed be without a functioning government at all. Yesterday's bomb blasts by unknown terrorists are just the latest manifestation of the violence that could ensue.

Adrian Hamilton: Ultimately, this is as much about politics as justice

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:00:01 GMT

"Closure" is the word that people keep using about Radovan Karadzic's arrest and likely trial for war crimes in The Hague. And in the sense of the closing of a chapter it is probably the right word – or would be should the real nasty in the Bosnian massacres, General Ratko Mladic, be caught. If the specialists are to be believed, that should follow soon.

Adrian Hamilton: Britain can offer Barack Obama advice on Iraq

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 23:00:01 GMT

With Obama's visit to Europe (and Iraq and Afghanistan) next week, there's been the inevitable discussion of America's relationship with Europe: who is now it's favourite ally and what would an Obama presidency mean for Britain's hallowed "special relationship"?

Adrian Hamilton: The West still isn't taking the Iraqis into account

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Within the next week – or so we are told – the Prime Minister will be delivering a statement of firm intent about the future of our troops in Iraq. The ground has been prepared, the journalists invited out to see the security progress made in Basra. Interviews have been conducted with the soldiers on the ground and the generals up above. The time has come to declare victory and start withdrawal

Adrian Hamilton: McEwan's attack on Islam reveals only his ignorance

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:00:01 GMT

It was no doubt a noble gesture on Ian McEwan's part last weekend to leap to the defence of his friend, Martin Amis, over the charges of racism against Muslims. And it was perhaps even bolder of McEwan to add his own total contempt for "Islamism".

Adrian Hamilton: This meeting in Saudi Arabia won't solve oil prices

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:00:01 GMT

You have to love politicians for their sheer cheek. For the last 10 years as chancellor, the Prime Minister (and for half of that period the Governor of the Bank of England) have lapped up all the international pressures bringing prices down in Britain and claimed it was the result of their own, wise policies. Now that the international pressures have all gone in the reverse direction, they're declaring that it is all to do with outside forces and nowt to do with them.

Adrian Hamilton: The strange legacy of President Bush

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Not a tear was shed, nor a cheer raised. Not even the protesters have bothered to turn out as President Bush has wound his way around Europe on the final visit of his two-term occupancy of the White House. Instead, he has come almost like an anonymous diplomat to hold talks in private, say a few words to the cameras and -unless the UK has something very unexpected up its sleeve this weekend - to depart almost unrecognised, and certainly unacclaimed.

Adrian Hamilton: Stop knocking the banks – they've done us proud

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 23:00:01 GMT

There is a constant refrain among the critics of Gordon Brown that he somehow understands international economics but not the economics of the doorstep. He can tell you the price of a barrel of oil but not what it costs to fill up your car.