The Role of the State in the Financialisation of the UK Economy

This article looks at the role of UK governments in the financialisation of the British economy and its industry. It argues two things. First, the UK state has had a rather more active role here than most observers have acknowledged. Successive governments since the 1970s have not merely abandoned industry, they have handed much of its control to the financial sector. Second, a key part of this policy shift was linked to the rising power of the Treasury and its reshaping of the former Department of Trade and Industry in its own ideal economic policy image. This both boosted the City and disadvantaged industry, thus propelling the UK towards financialisation at a faster pace than almost all rival economies. The arguments are based on evidence from a mix of interviews with central actors, published insider accounts and an analysis of budget statements in the period 1976–2010

Stakeholders' views and experiences of care and interventions for addressing frailty and pre-frailty:a meta-synthesis of qualitative evidence

Frailty is a common condition in older age and is a public health concern which requires integrated care and involves different stakeholders. This meta-synthesis focuses on experiences, understanding, and attitudes towards screening, care, intervention and prevention for frailty across frail and healthy older persons, caregivers, health and social care practitioners. Studies published since 2001 were identified through search of electronic databases; 81 eligible papers were identified and read in full, and 45 papers were finally included and synthesized. The synthesis was conducted with a meta-ethnographic approach. We identified four key themes: Uncertainty about malleability of frailty; Strategies to prevent or to respond to frailty; Capacity to care and person and family-centred service provision; Power and choice. A bottom-up approach which emphasises and works in synchrony with frail older people's and their families' values, goals, resources and optimisation strategies is necessary. A greater employment of psychological skills, enhancing communication abilities and tools to overcome disempowering attitudes should inform care organisation, resulting in more efficient and satisfactory use of services. Public health communication about prevention and management of frailty should be founded on a paradigm of resilience, balanced acceptance, and coping. Addressing stakeholders' views about the preventability of frailty was seen as a salient need

Dimethyl fumarate in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 (RECOVERY): a randomised, controlled, open-label, platform trial

Dimethyl fumarate (DMF) inhibits inflammasome-mediated inflammation and has been proposed as a treatment for patients hospitalised with COVID-19. This randomised, controlled, open-label platform trial (Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy [RECOVERY]), is assessing multiple treatments in patients hospitalised for COVID-19 (NCT04381936, ISRCTN50189673). In this assessment of DMF performed at 27 UK hospitals, adults were randomly allocated (1:1) to either usual standard of care alone or usual standard of care plus DMF. The primary outcome was clinical status on day 5 measured on a seven-point ordinal scale. Secondary outcomes were time to sustained improvement in clinical status, time to discharge, day 5 peripheral blood oxygenation, day 5 C-reactive protein, and improvement in day 10 clinical status. Between 2 March 2021 and 18 November 2021, 713 patients were enroled in the DMF evaluation, of whom 356 were randomly allocated to receive usual care plus DMF, and 357 to usual care alone. 95% of patients received corticosteroids as part of routine care. There was no evidence of a beneficial effect of DMF on clinical status at day 5 (common odds ratio of unfavourable outcome 1.12; 95% CI 0.86-1.47; p = 0.40). There was no significant effect of DMF on any secondary outcome

Financialisation and the coupon pool Financeirização e a aposta em dividendos

By the late 1990s, shareholder value was the explicit, new priority for the old corporations in the US and UK where the stock market had gained an unprecedented influence on the behaviour of giant corporations. The business press obsessively discussed which managements were, and were not, delivering value and all the major US consulting firms had moved into selling value metrics and implementation packages promising to solve this question. Over this decade, share prices rose unsteadily in a long bull market which ended in the tech stock crash of Spring 2000 which, one year later, had turned into a bear market in a slowing US economy. All this poses new questions about what’s at stake in the capital market's pressure on corporations for increased returns; and what's behind higher share prices and their collapse? The intellectual responses widened the debate but has led to increasing conceptual confusion: the journalistic term "shareholder value" has passed into academic usage; while neologisms such as financialisation are used differently by various authors. Against this background, our paper aims to discuss the existing terms and main definitions and to argue for a redefinition of the problem around a new generic concept of coupon pool capitalism. After this, the paper presents a brief empirical analysis of the dynamics of the coupon pool in the USA and UK. This analysis represents part of our answer to the question of what's new and different about the current forms of capitalism.<br>O artigo descreve as mudanças recentes nas formas de funcionamento do capitalismo contemporâneo baseada no papel autônomo alcançado pela esfera financeira. Discutindo com várias propostas de explicação do fenômeno, ele propõe uma explicação que acentua o caráter ao mesmo tempo paradoxal, contingente e contraditório do processo que estamos vivendo. A forma atual é originária dos países anglo-saxões e se espraia rumo aos demais países desenvolvidos e em desenvolvimento. Nos Estados Unidos e Inglaterra chegou-se a situação, para muitos pouco esperada, em que a quantidade de famílias detentoras de patrimônio acionário relevante ultrapassa o número de trabalhadores diretamente engajados nas empresas que estão cotadas nos mercados, dando centralidade ao mercado financeiro na criação e distribuição de riquezas daquelas sociedades. Entretanto, os autores argumentam que esse processo está baseado em hipóteses dificilmente realizáveis relativamente à capacidade das empresas fornecerem no longo prazo o volume de dividendos necessário para satisfazerem as expectativas e necessidades dos investidores