The big freeze - but not for the banks

More and more organisations are announcing pay freezes, in a desperate attempt to cut costs and preserve jobs. A quick search comes up with BA, bmi, Ford, Unilever, the BBC, Channel 4, DB Schenker (the UK’s largest rail freight company), and in the US Macy’s department store and senior management staff at the Whitehouse.

Some of these moves are receiving the support of unions, while others are not – unions at bmi, BA and Ford are not happy with the proposals and threatening action, and there will be much more news on these stories to come. In a TV interview at the end of last year David Frost Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce predicted that there would be salary cuts and pay freezes in an effort to prevent some of the hundreds of thousands of job cuts expected this year.

Small wonder then, that many people are finding it hard to take the news that there is a ‘Stampede by banks to beat bonus crackdown’ and to pay out millions in bonuses to their staff, before a threatened government crackdown that might prevent the banks that are receiving government insurance to underwrite toxic debt from paying ‘excessive remuneration’, according to the front page of yesterday’s Times.

Unit 2 Macro: UK Trade in Services [20 May 2012]
Unit 2 Macro: Bank Cuts UK growth Forecast for 2012 [16 May 2012]
Unit 2 Macro: Monetary Policy and Inflation Glossary [5 May 2012]
Unit 2 Macro: Trade and Balance of Payments Glossary [5 May 2012]
Macro Revision: Putting Things in Context [29 Apr 2012]
Unit 4 Macro: The Euro Zone Crisis (Revision) [22 Apr 2012]
Unit 2 Macro: Revision on Interest Rates and the Exchange Rate [3 Apr 2012]
Posen on slower growth in the UK compared to the USA [30 Mar 2012]
George Buckley at the Millfield Economics Society [28 Mar 2012]
Beyond the Bike - Monetary Policy in Africa [28 Mar 2012]
Mortgage interest rates, LIBOR and game theory [3 Mar 2012]
A return to Glass-Steagall to prevent another crash? A lesson from economic history. [17 Feb 2012]
Unit 4 Macro: King on the UK Economy [15 Feb 2012]
Beyond the Bike - The Importance of Remittances [15 Jan 2012]
Unit 4 Macro: UK Bond Yields Reach Record Lows [11 Jan 2012]
Unit 2 Macro: Quantitative Easing in the UK [8 Jan 2012]
Unit 2 Macro: Mobile Phones and African Economic Growth [18 Dec 2011]
Beyond the Bike - The Value of Money [19 Nov 2011]
Unit 2 Macro: Should the EU introduce a Tobin Tax? [14 Nov 2011]
AS Macro: The State of British Business [13 Nov 2011]
Eurozone crisis - a selection of resources [12 Nov 2011]
Unit 3 Micro: UK Executive Pay - All in it Together? [29 Oct 2011]
Can the “invisible hand” solve Africa’s poverty? [13 Oct 2011]
Why Is Macroeconomics Such A Mess? [11 Oct 2011]
Greek debt decision tree [25 Sep 2011]
Unit 4 Macro: IMF Flags up Risks of Double Dip [20 Sep 2011]
Mixing with the Nobel Economists [4 Sep 2011]
Unit 4 Macro: Dangers of High Inflation [11 Jul 2011]
AS Macro Key Term: Deflation [24 May 2011]
A2 Micro: Oligopoly [20 May 2011]
UK Economy Update: What Mervyn Said [11 May 2011]
A2 Macro: Back to Roubini - a Year On! [11 Apr 2011]
OCR F585 June 2011: Euro Area on the Rocks? [11 Apr 2011]
ECB breaks rank and raises interest rates [7 Apr 2011]
AS Macro Key Term: Expansionary Monetary Policy [4 Apr 2011]
A2 Micro: Updates on Competition Issues [2 Apr 2011]
Why is the Yen appreciating? [18 Mar 2011]
Ireland - Mass Unemployment and Shrinking GDP [10 Mar 2011]
David Smith on Shifting Sands in the Global Economy [8 Feb 2011]
Regulation and the banking industry: reflections from Davos [30 Jan 2011]
Shorting the market - the vultures target HMV [23 Jan 2011]
Will we have to live with high unemployment? [17 Jan 2011]
iLand - Shareholders and Taxpayers feel the Pain [24 Nov 2010]
What You Need to Know About Economics [18 Nov 2010]
The Acid Burns Through - Requiem for Neo Liberalism [28 Oct 2010]
Jerome Kerviel and the Principal Agent Problem [5 Oct 2010]
Housing market and negative equity [31 Aug 2010]
Credit squeeze - businesses rely more on factoring [23 Aug 2010]
King on the economy [11 Aug 2010]
Choppy times ahead [11 Aug 2010]
Australia divided on a mining super-tax [4 Jun 2010]
Are we on the cusp of a second banking crisis? [1 Jun 2010]
AS Macro Revision: Household Saving [30 May 2010]
AS Macro Revision: The Importance of Consumption [30 May 2010]
Euro Land and Optimal Currency Areas - A Valentine’s Day Massacre [29 May 2010]
AS Macro: Sterling and the UK Economy [29 May 2010]
Roubini at the LSE - governments run out of policy bullets [20 May 2010]
AS / A2 Revision - Where Next for the UK Economy? [2 May 2010]
Accommodatory policies [24 Apr 2010]
Robert Peston - On the Money [5 Apr 2010]
Small businesses and financial economies of scale [2 Apr 2010]
Capitalism - A Love Story [5 Mar 2010]
UK CEOs on their recession strategies [23 Feb 2010]
US rate rise causes hot flows of money [20 Feb 2010]
Inflationary pressures in China [16 Feb 2010]
Celebrities lobby for a Robin Hood tax [10 Feb 2010]
Mervyn King on Tailwinds and Headwinds [10 Feb 2010]
Assorted Links (11 Jan) - Focus on Business Economics [11 Jan 2010]
Assorted Links (6 Jan) [6 Jan 2010]
Impact of global recession on developing countries [18 Dec 2009]
Is monetary policy becoming less effective? [16 Dec 2009]
Judging the impact of QE [5 Nov 2009]
Gloomy summary [13 Oct 2009]
Debt repayment - a virtue or a curse? [17 Sep 2009]
King confirms green shoots [15 Sep 2009]
Mature Banking [14 Sep 2009]
The Wealth Effect [12 Sep 2009]
BRIC Watch: Brazil climbs out of recession [11 Sep 2009]
A2 Macro: Domestic and External Headwinds [11 Sep 2009]
World Economic Forum drops UK a place in competitiveness rankings [9 Sep 2009]
Keynes v Friedman [5 Sep 2009]
What happens when the hose pipe is turned off? [23 Aug 2009]
Bank lending and the economy [3 Aug 2009]
BoE Health Check on the UK Economy [27 Jun 2009]
Questions in Behavioural Economics -  Credit Cards and Spending [19 Jun 2009]
Bank runs and infectious diseases [7 Jun 2009]
A2 Micro: Contestable Markets [15 May 2009]
Revision: The Liquidity Trap [10 May 2009]
Sunlight is a great disinfectant [30 Apr 2009]
Is the juice worth the squeeze [7 Mar 2009]
Macroeconomics Seminar with David Miles [27 Feb 2009]
Q&A: Why when base rates change does it cause other interest rates to also change? [23 Feb 2009]
The bottomless pit of public sector debt [19 Feb 2009]
Barclays’ balance sheet balloons [12 Feb 2009]
Britain leads the world - from behind….. [9 Feb 2009]
Read the small print! [12 Jan 2009]
Covenants may become THE story in 2009 [4 Jan 2009]
An economy on the brink [26 Dec 2008]
Bankers and the Blame Game [20 Dec 2008]
The Fed Reaches the Floor [17 Dec 2008]

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