Latest news with #spending
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Britain will 'without a doubt' spend £10 billion extra on defence, says Labour
LABOUR'S Defence Secretary John Healey said spending 3% of GDP on defence was no longer an 'ambition' but a certainty. The UK Government's 10-year defence plan, which is due to be announced on Monday, is said to be 'unaffordable' without the increased spending, The Times has reported. Prime Minister Keir Starmer had previously outlined the 3% target by 2034 as an 'ambition', but Healey has now said it is a certainty. Healey's comments mean the Labour Government would be committed to spending more than £10 billion extra on defence every year despite criticism over proposed cuts to public services. READ MORE: Labour has 'given up' on by-election amid SNP-Reform contest, says John Swinney In February, Starmer announced that the UK would spend 2.5% of GDP on defence by April 2027, raiding the international development budget, which was a decision branded by the Scottish Government as 'deeply disappointing'. At the same time, Starmer also outlined an 'ambition' to reach 3% by 2034, a target which was reportedly described by government sources as still an 'ambition' this week. However, Healey (below) told The Times on Saturday: 'In the next parliament, this country will spend 3 per cent of our GDP on defence.' When pressed whether this was a firm commitment, he said he had 'no doubt' Britain would be spending 3% 'in the next parliament'. He said there was a 'certain decade of rising defence spending', adding: 'It allows us to plan for the long term. It allows us to deal with the pressures.' It is unclear whether Healey's comments were an attempt to pressure the Treasury into approving the spending or if it was a commitment that has been agreed across Whitehall. It was also reported that the review, which was due to be published during VE Day week this month, into Britain's defence spending had been delayed because of rows with the Treasury. One source told The Times there had been 'discontent that the Ministry of Defence is using it to push for more defence spending'. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has estimated that reaching 3% of GDP by the next parliament would cost the UK an additional £17.3bn in 2029-30. The 130-page review reportedly will warn of the 'immediate and pressing' danger posed by Russia and will also describe Iran and North Korea as 'regional disruptors'. The review comes as other government departments are still negotiating how much they will have to spend over the next three years. A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said: 'This government has announced the largest sustained increase to defence spending since the end of the Cold War — 2.5 per cent by 2027 and 3 per cent in the next parliament when fiscal and economic conditions allow, including an extra £5 billion this financial year. 'The review will rightly set the vision for how that uplift will be spent, including new capabilities to put us at the leading edge of innovation in Nato, investment in our people and making defence an engine for growth across the UK — making Britain more secure at home and strong abroad.' NATO member states are expected to agree to a defence spending target during a summit in June with the target reportedly possibly being as high as 3.5% of GDP.
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Elon Musk Speaks Out As He Exits Trump Administration
Elon Musk's days of working at the White House are coming to a close. On Wednesday, May 28, the Tesla CEO announced on X that he is departing his position after his 'scheduled time' ends. 'As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending. The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.' The world's richest person was considered a 'special government employee' meaning he is limited to working 130 days in a 365-day-period. The 130-day mark since Trump's inauguration is on Friday, according to CBS News Senior White House and Political Correspondent, Ed O'Keefe. However, Musk's exit comes hours after he criticized the President's spending bill in a clip from his upcoming interview with CBS Sunday Morning, claiming it 'increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it' and that it 'undermines' DOGE's work.
New York Times
a day ago
- Business
- New York Times
Fed's Preferred Inflation Gauge Subdued in April as Spending Slows
The Federal Reserve's preferred inflation measure stayed subdued in April as spending slowed. But the outlook for the economy has become even more muddied amid constant changes to President Trump's policies. The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, released on Friday, climbed 2.1 percent in April from a year earlier, slightly lower than the previous reading of 2.3 percent and closer in line with the Fed's 2 percent target. On a monthly basis, prices increased 0.1 percent after staying flat in March. The 'core' personal consumption expenditures price index, which strips out volatile food and energy costs and is closely watched as a measure for underlying inflation, rose 0.1 percent in April. Compared with the same time last year, it is up 2.5 percent. In March, it rose at an annual pace of 2.6 percent. Personal spending rose 0.2 percent for the month, a significant drop compared to March's 0.7 percent increase. The data from the Commerce Department covered a period in which Mr. Trump unveiled and then quickly rolled back aggressive tariffs against virtually all of the country's major trading partners after U.S. government bond markets seized up. He has since minted tentative deals with some countries, like the United Kingdom, but also threatened fresh levies on imports from the European Union. He delayed those days later. In the latest twist, a federal appeals court on Thursday agreed to temporarily preserve many of Mr. Trump's tariffs after a lower court deemed them illegal earlier this week. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Guardian
a day ago
- Business
- The Guardian
So long, Elon: the cuts didn't go to plan, but you completely shredded your reputation
I can't believe that Elon Musk is leaving Doge, the government department he named after a tired and basic meme that most of the internet had moved on from around a decade ago. 'As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end,' Musk wrote this week (capital letters: model's own), 'I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful government spending.' Oh man. 'Thank you for the opportunity'?! At some level you have to salute Donald Trump's ability to turn even the world's richest man into an Apprentice candidate who leaves in week four after completely wiping out in the hotdog stand task. Musk arrived in government promising to slash spending by $2tn. He leaves it a mere $1.86tn short of that target, even by his own estimations. Meanwhile, the president's new tax bill is set to add $2.3tn to the deficit. I imagine Musk thought his government finale would be a spectacular extravaganza – 'you're welcome, Washington!' – involving 2,000 chainsaw-wielding chorus girls. Instead, it's a tweet. And yes – we DO all still call them tweets. Ironically, the thing that Musk has been most stunningly effective at slashing is his own reputation. Think about it. He arrived in Trump's orbit as a somewhat mysterious man, widely regarded as a tech genius, and a titan of the age. He leaves it with vast numbers of people woken up to the fact he's a weird and creepy breeding fetishist, who desperately pretends to be good at video games, and wasn't remotely as key to Space X or Tesla's engineering prowess as they'd vaguely thought. Also, with a number of them apparently convinced he had a botched penile implant. Rightly or wrongly convinced – sure. I'm just asking questions. But look, it's good news for Tesla investors, who have managed to end Musk's practice of WFWH (working from White House), and are now demanding he puts in a 40-hour week to save the company whose stock he has spent the past few months tanking. As the world order dramatically seeks to rearrange itself in the new era of US unreliability, no one should ever be able to unsee the president of the United States's decision to turn the White House lawn into a car sales lot for his sad friend. Did it work? It seems not. Musk spent a lot of this week airing his hurt feelings about his brrm-brrm cars. 'People were burning Teslas,' he whined to Jeff Bezos's Washington Post this week. 'Why would you do that? That's really uncool.' Well, one thing we will no longer have to endure is this guy's decrees on what is or isn't cool. The timeworn thing about money and power is that they allow nerds to reinvent themselves as cool. You see it on Wall Street, where sea-beast financiers get manscaped by trophy wives who are no longer out of their league. You see it in Hollywood, where weird little guys become alpha movie producers. You see it in Bezos's transformation from puffy-chinos-wearing, dress-down-Friday dweeb to Bilderberg Vin Diesel impersonator. What you rarely see is the alchemy of that process in reverse, live and in real time. But we got that with Elon, and we have to take our laughs where we can. In some other businesses, Musk could have convinced himself it wasn't happening, but politics is a place where pollsters literally ask real people what they think of public figures every single week. Elon's approval ratings are underwater. No doubt we're this close to him identifying the real problem: that we simply need new voters. Musk has long been convinced that people don't know how to handle his genius in all fields. Four years ago, he hosted Saturday Night Live, and sometime afterwards revealed on a podcast how the cast and writers had reacted to the uncontainably hilarious suggestions made by him and his team of bros. 'We come in just, like, guns blazing with ideas,' he honked, explaining he'd pitched a … bit, is it? … where he was 'going to take my cock out. So I'm going to reach down into my pants … and then I pull out a baby rooster. Like, 'This is my tiny cock.'' Oh very good, sir. Absolute genius, sir. Presumably terrified that they would lose their jobs forever to this superlative talent, the SNL team declined to 'yes-and' this genius sketch into the final show running order, but Musk managed to get his own back – at least in his account of hosting an episode with a flattering 13% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. 'There's a bunch of things that I said that were just not on the script. They have these cue cards for what you're supposed to say, and I just didn't say it. I just went off the rails.' Mm. Just like you have now. As for where Musk goes next, he's obviously building a Texan compound for the mothers of his many babies. But, psychologically, Mars would seem to be the answer. After a humiliation this big, only colonising another planet feels like the appropriately sized salve. It doesn't matter that Mars is an obvious shithole that looks like the least appealing disused quarry on Earth – a place so bleak and empty that if they found one single fossilised flower it would be celebrated like the holy grail, even though the impossible majesty of the Amazon rainforest is right here. But of course, the point of Mars is that it would be the place of Elon, Teslamandias, king of kings. And you know, I feel more confident than ever that we could all look upon his works and despair. Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
Washington Post
a day ago
- Business
- Washington Post
5 tips for a fun summer without bag fees, freeloaders and timeshare traps
Picture this: Your tan lines have faded, the tchotchkes you purchased have already gathered dust, but one thing sticks around after vacation — a credit card balance that hurts like a bad sunburn. That's the reality when summer fun morphs into reckless spending on the road.
