Robin Hood tax needs carve-out for repo funding

By Dominic Elliott

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Europe’s Robin Hood tax needs a temporary carve-out for the funding of banks through repurchase agreements, known as repo financing. Over the longer term, it is a good idea for lenders to reduce the instant gratification that short-term wholesale funding provides. But with sovereign debt concerns lingering, it is too early to pull the rug out from under them.

It is time the UK buried Thatcher’s europhobia

By Robert Cole

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

David Cameron’s wish to reform the EU has been met with barely-disguised derision in Berlin, Paris and Brussels. It is not that Europe thinks it is perfect: Merkel, Hollande, Draghi et al know they have mountains to climb. In principle and in practice, the euro project has big problems. But why on earth should the leaders of Europe make a complex job more difficult for themselves by pandering to the prejudices of its peripheral northern cousin?

Thatcher’s economic revolution was not bloodless

By Martin Hutchinson

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Margaret Thatcher’s government was Schumpeterian: it destroyed as well as created. Her ultra-high interest rates and strong pound devastated industry, then her 1986 reform gutted the City of London. But her reduction in marginal tax rates and defeat of the unions restored Britain’s economic vitality.

China and the chaos theory of finance

By John Foley

(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)

Will China have a financial crisis? And if so, would Chinese people be any worse off? The answers are not found in the country’s rapidly rising levels of debt, but in the potential for chaos when things go wrong. China is sliding further along the scale of chaotic financial systems, but is not yet in the danger zone.

Review: The Robespierres of central banking

By Dominic Elliott

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

The most lasting inheritance of the 2008 financial crisis may be a change in the purpose of central banks. From the 1980s until 2007, most believed that monetary authorities should primarily use a policy interest rate to combat inflation. Interventions in the markets or in the financial system were outside the remit, or so the orthodox view went. Neil Irwin’s “The Alchemists” shows how that thinking has been turned on its head.

New despair seeps out of U.S. employment numbers

By Martin Hutchinson

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

A new despair is seeping out of U.S. employment numbers. The economy added just 88,000 new jobs in March, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on April 5. And the number of people counted as available to work fell to its lowest level in 34 years.

Japanese economy needs nuclear second chance

By Christopher Swann

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Japan needs to give nuclear energy a second chance. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s goal of weakening the yen will make electricity even pricier in a country that imported over 80 percent of its energy even before the Fukushima disaster in 2011.

HBOS top brass reap what they sowed

By George Hay

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

HBOS’s top managers are finally starting to reap what they sowed. So far, official blame for the spectacular collapse of one of the UK’s biggest banks has been restricted to its former head of corporate lending Peter Cummings, who was fined 500,000 pounds by the UK regulator in September. A hard-hitting report by Britain’s Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards has rightly begun to point the finger at the very top.

Kuroda does what he can for BOJ’s inflation goal

By Andy Mukherjee

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

The Bank of Japan’s new chief has dumped his predecessor’s timid script. Haruhiko Kuroda has crafted an ambitious new plan to end the country’s chronic deflation.

U.S. auto sales put brakes on economy’s detractors

By Agnes T. Crane
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.

U.S. car sales are putting the brakes on the economy’s detractors. Americans are buying more vehicles thanks in part to pent-up demand and cheap loans. But the housing recovery helps, too. That and other economic data suggest consumers are looking beyond slimmer paychecks. Federal spending cuts allowing, that means the U.S. engine may be about to purr.