Charles Read | |
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Born | London, England |
Occupation | Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge |
Awards |
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Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Cambridge |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Economic history |
Charles Read is a British economic historian based at the University of Cambridge,where he is a fellow of Corpus Christi College,Cambridge. [1] He is also a financial journalist who used to write and edit for The Economist. [2]
His research rose to prominence as a result of the financial panic caused by the September 2022 United Kingdom mini-budget,his research on the similar February 1847 budget anticipating the policy mistakes made by the Truss government [3] and for his warnings personally delivered to Kwasi Kwarteng and HM Treasury that the mini budget's policies could lead to financial instability. [4] [5] [6]
Read is also known for predicting the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank at the book launch for his second book,held at the University of Cambridge the evening before the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on 10 March 2023. [7] [8] As a result,it has been suggested he has staked a claim to be 'Cambridge's avatar economist for the 21st century'. [9] [10]
Read was born in London and is of English,Welsh,Armenian and Ethiopian ancestry. [11] [12] He completed BA,MPhil and PhD degrees focussed on economic history at Christ's College,Cambridge,and subsequently worked in research for an investment bank and as a writer and editor at The Economist. [13]
His doctoral research on British economic policy during the Irish famine won more academic prizes for its quality from learned societies than that of any other early-career economic historian of his generation. [14]
After a visiting senior scholarship at the University of Oxford,in 2018 he was elected a fellow of Corpus Christi College,Cambridge,and is currently the college's only full fellow of some ethnic African ancestry. He teaches economics and history for both the university and his college,where he is the founding director of the Corpus Bridging Course,the college's flagship widening participation scheme. [15]
In 2022 he was elected to the fellowship of the Royal Historical Society for his contribution to historical scholarship. [16]
In 2023 he was invited and elected to the fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts on the basis of his work in widening access to those from underrepresented backgrounds at Corpus Christi College,particularly his work founding and directing the Bridging Course.
Read is best known for his two books. The first,"The Great Famine in Ireland and Britain's Financial Crisis" (2022),challenged much of existing historical opinion that assumed the severity of the famine was the result of British colonialism and laissez-faire ideas. Instead it argued that much of the death toll was the result of austerity the British government was forced to impose after the February 1847 budget that announced borrowing to expand spending on relief triggered the financial panic of 1847. [3] The book is regarded as having anticipated the financial panic in the United Kingdom triggered by the September 2022 United Kingdom mini-budget,which also contained unfunded tax cuts and large scale borrowing to fund relief (in 1847 for Irish famine relief and in 2022 for energy bill relief). [17] [12] He delivered a lecture to civil servants at HM Treasury [18] and wrote to Kwasi Kwarteng, [19] the new chancellor of the exchequer,on 8 September 2022 advising him not to make the same mistakes as the February 1847 budget,which saw a fiscal stimulus pushing up market interest rates and causing a financial panic among investors. [4] His advice was not heeded,and as a result rising interest rates caused a crisis in the defined-benefit pensions sector as the cost of their borrowing for investment overtook the returns that they made from it. [20] Kwarteng was sacked and Liz Truss resigned as prime minister.
His second book "Calming the storms:the Carry Trade,the Banking School and British Financial Crises since 1825" (2023) provides a new explanation of British financial crises over the past two hundred years with the relationship between the carry trade and monetary policy at the heart of the mechanism. [21] Severe banking crises in Britain disappeared after 1866 as the Bank of England learnt how to use its monetary policy to prevent the carry trade from causing instability. As the Bank of England dropped these policies with the advent of competition and credit control in 1971,financial crises returned with the secondary banking crisis in 1973–75,global financial crisis in 2007-09 and mini-budget crisis of 2022. [13]
His Majesty's Treasury,occasionally referred to as the Exchequer,or more informally the Treasury,is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for developing and executing the government's public finance policy and economic policy. The Treasury maintains the Online System for Central Accounting and Reporting,the replacement for the Combined Online Information System,which itemises departmental spending under thousands of category headings,and from which the Whole of Government Accounts annual financial statements are produced.
A financial crisis is any of a broad variety of situations in which some financial assets suddenly lose a large part of their nominal value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries,many financial crises were associated with banking panics,and many recessions coincided with these panics. Other situations that are often called financial crises include stock market crashes and the bursting of other financial bubbles,currency crises,and sovereign defaults. Financial crises directly result in a loss of paper wealth but do not necessarily result in significant changes in the real economy.
The Bank Charter Act 1844,sometimes referred to as the Peel Banking Act of 1844,was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom,passed under the government of Robert Peel,which restricted the powers of British banks and gave exclusive note-issuing powers to the central Bank of England. It is one of the Bank of England Acts 1694 to 1892.
The Panic of 1847 was a major British commercial and banking crisis,possibly triggered by the announcement in early March 1847 of government borrowing to pay for relief to combat the Great Famine in Ireland. It is also associated with the end of the 1840s railway industry boom and the failure of many non-bank lenders. The crisis was composed of two phases,one in April 1847 and one in October 1847,which was more serious and known as 'The Week of Terror'.
The Panic of 1866 was an international financial downturn that accompanied the failure of Overend,Gurney and Company in London,and the corso forzoso abandonment of the silver standard in Italy.
The British Banking School was a group of 19th century economists from the United Kingdom who wrote on monetary and banking issues. The school arose in opposition to the British Currency School;they argued that currency issue could be naturally restricted by the desire of bank depositors to redeem their notes for gold. According to Jacob Viner the main members of the Banking School were Thomas Tooke,John Fullarton,James Wilson and J. W. Gilbart. They believed "The amount of paper notes in circulation was adequately controlled by the ordinary processes of competitive banking,and if the requirement of convertibility was maintained,could not exceed the needs of business for any appreciable length of time". Thus they opposed the requirement in the Bank Act of 1844 for a reserve requirement on banknotes.
Mary Elizabeth Truss is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from September to October 2022. On her fiftieth day in office,she stepped down amid a government crisis,making her the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. The member of Parliament (MP) for South West Norfolk since 2010,Truss previously held various Cabinet positions under three prime ministers—David Cameron,Theresa May and Boris Johnson—lastly as foreign secretary from 2021 to 2022.
Akwasi Addo Alfred Kwarteng is a British politician who served as the Chancellor of the Exchequer from 6 September to 14 October 2022 under Liz Truss and the Secretary of State for Business,Energy and Industrial Strategy from 2021 to 2022 under Boris Johnson. A member of the Conservative Party,he has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Spelthorne since 2010.
Britannia Unchained:Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity is a political book written by several British Conservative Party MPs and released on 13 September 2012. Its authors present a treatise,arguing that Britain should adopt a different and radical approach to business and economics or risk "an inevitable slide into mediocrity".
Since late 2021,the prices for many essential goods in the United Kingdom began increasing faster than household incomes,resulting in a fall in real incomes. This is caused in part by a rise in inflation in both the UK and the world in general,as well as the economic impact of issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic,Russia's invasion of Ukraine,and Brexit. While all in the UK are affected by rising prices,it most substantially affects low-income persons. The British government has responded in various ways such as grants,tax rebates,and subsidies to electricity and gas suppliers.
The Truss ministry began on 6 September 2022 when Liz Truss was invited by Queen Elizabeth II—two days before the monarch's death—to succeed Boris Johnson as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Johnson resigned as leader of the Conservative Party the previous day after Truss was elected as his successor. The Truss ministry was formed from the 2019 Parliament of the United Kingdom,as a Conservative majority government.
Liz Truss's tenure as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom began on 6 September 2022 when she accepted an invitation from Elizabeth II to form a government,succeeding Boris Johnson,and ended 50 days later on 25 October upon her resignation. As prime minister,she served simultaneously as First Lord of the Treasury,Minister for the Civil Service,and Minister for the Union.
On 23 September 2022,the Chancellor of the Exchequer,Kwasi Kwarteng,delivered a Ministerial Statement entitled "The Growth Plan" to the House of Commons. Widely referred to in the media as a mini-budget,it contained a set of economic policies and tax cuts such as bringing forward the planned cut in the basic rate of income tax from 20% to 19%;abolishing the highest (45%) rate of income tax in England,Wales and Northern Ireland;reversing a plan announced in March 2021 to increase corporation tax from 19% to 25% from April 2023;reversing the April 2022 increase in National Insurance;and cancelling the proposed Health and Social Care Levy. Following widespread negative response to the mini-budget,the planned abolition of the 45% tax rate was reversed 10 days later,while plans to cancel the increase in corporation tax were reversed 21 days later.
In September and October 2022,the Conservative Party government led by newly appointed prime minister Liz Truss faced a credibility crisis. It was caused by the September 2022 mini-budget and a disorganised vote in the House of Commons over a parliamentary vote to ban fracking,ultimately resulting in the loss of support of Conservative members of parliament (MPs).
On 14 October 2022,the British tabloid newspaper the Daily Star began a livestream of an iceberg lettuce next to a framed photograph of Liz Truss,who had recently been appointed the prime minister of the United Kingdom. This act followed an opinion piece in The Economist that compared the expected brevity of Truss's premiership to the shelf life of a head of lettuce,with the October 2022 United Kingdom government crisis occurring just weeks into her tenure and leading many political commentators to opine that Truss's resignation would be imminent. She announced her resignation as prime minister on 20 October 2022,before the lettuce had wilted;the Daily Star subsequently declared the lettuce "victorious" over Truss.
The November 2022 United Kingdom autumn statement was delivered to the House of Commons on 17 November 2022 by Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt,after being delayed by three weeks from its original scheduled date of 31 October. The budget addressed the ongoing cost of living crisis,and saw the announcement of a five-year package of tax increases and spending cuts designed to steer the UK through recession. An economic forecast published on the same day by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) stated the UK had entered a recession after experiencing two quarters of a shrinking economy,and predicted the UK's economy would shrink during 2023. A reduction in households' disposable income was also forecast.
The "anti-growth coalition" is a British pejorative term and political slogan used by former British Prime Minister Liz Truss during and after her premiership in 2022 against those critical of her policy agenda,particularly of the September mini-budget under Kwasi Kwarteng. It was used in an attempt to portray its targets,including the main opposition parties and environmental activists,as a coalition of interests opposed to the United Kingdom's economic growth,and to portray herself and her allies as pro-growth.
Jeremy Hunt has served as Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom since his appointment on 14 October 2022. His tenure has so far been dominated by the cost of living crisis,and the global energy crisis. Hunt has served under two prime ministers during his tenure,Liz Truss until 25 October,and Rishi Sunak from 25 October.