Danisha Kazi
The government-engineered housing boom will hold back the recovery
21 July, 2021July 21, 2021 The UK housing market has become detached from the real economy. Far from ‘levelling up’, measures by the Treasury and the Bank of England have propelled a housing market boom for the wealthy, rather than support renters who are facing mounting arrears and debt through no fault of their own. Ultimately, this [...]
Lloyds is banking on Generation Rent
27 April, 2021Lloyds Bank’s plans to become a private landlord highlight how banks and institutional investors treat housing solely as an asset to squeeze out ever greater profits. For the rest of us it is simply a basic need—and increasingly out of our reach. The economic fallout from Covid has sharpened the divide between the housing ‘haves’ [...]
The Treasury and the City – still too close for comfort
18 March, 2021March 18, 2021 Despite all the wreckage to the economy from the financial crisis over 10 years ago - today major banks and their lobbyists continue to have the direct ear of the Chancellor and top officials at the Treasury. This erodes public trust and widens our demoractic deficit. The revolving door between politicians, the [...]
Modern-day colonialism: Debt crisis in the Global South
29 October, 2020As external debt repayments from low-income countries are forecast to reach between $2.6 and $3.4 trillion next year, the looming debt crisis in the Global South is set to become a debt catastrophe. This is not only a terrible echo of the speculative financing which laid the foundations for the slave trade, but constitutes a [...]
Beyond Financial Inclusion, We Need Racial Economic Justice
13 August, 2020The idea of financial inclusion has gained traction in recent years, but the approach fails to account for how ethnic minorities face greater risk of financial exclusion in the UK. Public and private financial institutions must put racial economic justice at the center of their efforts to integrate underbanked and excluded communities. In the UK [...]
The Bank of England and the slave trade – why apologies are not enough
23 July, 2020The Bank of England recently issued an apology for its ties with the slave trade. But notably, while accepting that former directors and members did profit from slavery, there was an effort to maintain the innocence of the institution. This demands a deeper look into the role of the Bank in driving and benefitting from [...]
It’s time to champion the visible hand
14 July, 2020The government’s mini summer budget announced last week, reveals a stubborn ideological commitment to the free market above all else. The Chancellor’s failure to develop a significant plan of new spending suggests he is still betting on a V-shaped recovery. This wholly underestimates the profound nature of the crisis in which ongoing uncertainty prevents households [...]
Unemployment is the next crisis – we cannot repeat the mistakes of the 1980s
30 June, 2020With unemployment predicted to skyrocket, the pandemic has brought into sharp focus the underlying fragilities of the UK labour market. Decades of deregulation and eroding trade union power has lowered standards and depressed wage growth for a generation. We cannot repeat the mistakes of the 1980s. The priority now must be a worker-centred approach to [...]
Government debt and Covid-19 – why there’s no need to worry
2 June, 2020It is inevitable that UK government debt will rise above pre-pandemic levels as government spending is stepped up, but there are good reasons not to fear such a scenario, and the pressure to return to austerity should be strongly resisted. The focus must be on boosting the recovery and reshaping the economy towards one that [...]