Gordon Brown - The Deferred Bill
Gordon Brown and the confusion of accounting treatment with economic reality
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TFL: Measured not managed
A discount rate moved, and Transport for London's wage bill appeared to fall by £120m while it was actually rising by £153m. Almost nothing in these accounts means what it is reported to mean.
TFL: The self-sufficiency illusion
Transport for London does not pay its own way. It has been permitted to say that it does, and the permission was granted by nobody in particular.
Marienfelde
Poland's border policy, and the door two million Poles walked through
The Two Negotiations of the NHS
How the NHS learned to be ruthless with its own staff and generous to everyone else
The Shibboleth Premium
Why the bulk annuity industry pays a fortune to avoid a fortnight of training
Four-fifths of 2008: what the ECB's private credit stress test actually says
The industry read the ECB's special feature as reassurance. Read in the original, it dismantles the two defences the sector relies on — and raises the subprime comparison itself. By Johan Landman.
Whose favour is it anyway? Debt-for-nature and the privatised guarantee
The new wave of debt conversions replaces taxpayer-backed guarantees with commercial insurance and philanthropic first-loss capital. The arithmetic has to give somewhere — and it will not be the investor's spread.
Property companies wearing pensioners as armour
Why the annuity industry's entry into housing is not an investment story but a constitutional one — and why the matching adjustment, not ownership share, is where the risk lives.
Patient Capital, Public Risk
Amanda Blanc says insurers stand ready to fund Britain's new towns. Read the small print, and the offer is to book the margin privately and leave the risk on the public's books.
The Triple Lock - Part 1 - The Ratchet
What the triple lock actually is, what it isn’t, and why both sides of the debate keep arguing about the wrong thing
The Triple Lock - Part 2 - The Invisible Subsidy
What public-sector pensions are really worth — and why almost nobody counts