Worldwide Financial Planning

Whitehall needs to find low-cost ways of boosting growth in the short-term, and the visit is well timed as India may be more receptive to Starmer as its relationship with the US has cooled. Notably, the trade deal improves market access for UK services firms.

Every year, the rumour mill whirs into overdrive in the run-up to the budget. And every year without fail, for the past 37 in finance, headlines shout about the possible end of something or other. “take it now or lose it forever”. Almost every time, nothing happens.

The benign market reaction is partly because the shutdown was foreseeable. At the start of the week many observers thought the shutdown would last a few days, but the consensus is now for two to four weeks.

A new Bank of England working paper confirms what many families already sensed: among all the inflation shocks, it’s food prices - the cost of bread, milk, pasta, which bites hardest today and cast the bleakest shadow on expectations for tomorrow.

Looking past short-term share price movements, Trump’s decision to charge up to $100,000 per application for skilled worker H-1B visas appears short sighted. A considerable portion of US productivity growth in the past few decades, as well most of the growth of US equities in the last three years, originates from US tech giants.

In economics the rival views between the mainstream and the heterodox (I’ll explain) of how inflation works aren’t just academic: they shape policies which ripple through mortgage rates, business costs, pay packets and savings.