This year alone, high youth unemployment will cost government £4.8bn in lost tax revenues and unemployment benefits, more than the budget for further education for 16 to 19 year-olds, and cost the economy £10.7bn in lost output, the report said. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), which contributed to the report, said

Tory bosses at Southampton City Council want to take services away from the city's least well off while protecting discounts for the better off, say the city's Labour councillors. They're proposing an amendment to make the budget fairer, to be debated at the Budget setting meeting on Wednesday, 15th February. The council's own reports warn that many of the Tories' proposed...

An especially interesting comparison is between the United States and the United Kingdom, which implemented a package of austerity measures in 2010. That’s interesting, don’t you think? For I’m rather wondering, just where is that austerity. As far as I know the budget deficit is still about 10% of GDP isn’t it? The lab experiment

George Osborne should consider emergency tax cuts in the Budget as Britain is "certain" to be plunged back into recession this year, an influential forecaster warns.

Officials fuming at low pay levels and high staff turnover are creating real operational difficulties with the Budget just seven seeks away

It was also being reported last night that the German government wants Greece to hand over control of tax and spending decisions to a ‘budget commissioner’ appointed by the rest of the eurozone, before the country gets its second bail-out. The budget commissioner would have to power to veto decisions made by the Greek government,

             I am going to write a few posts over the next week  about the Budget, as  I compile my budget submission to the Treasury.             The government’s stated policy is to eliminate the government’s structural deficit, mainly by cutting public spending. It...

To mark the start of 2012, last week we ran a series of posts on the main challenges for the Liberal Democrats in 2012. Here in one handy recap is the full list: The Budget May’s elections Treating supporters as active participants Wealth taxation Communicative ministers A coherent narrative And don’t forget the four priorities

To mark the start of 2012, we’re running a series of posts over consecutive days on the main challenges for the Liberal Democrats in 2012. I’ve already written about the four priorities for the party’s new Chief Executive, Tim Gordon, but as the Liberal Democrats are more than just the one man whilst he has

@RichardJMurphy Richard Murphy US economy ends year on a high note | The Guardian > What a difference a stimulus makes Sigh. The size of the stimulus is the size of the budget deficit. Budget deficits in the UK and US have been rather similar in the last couple of years, around 10% of