Roger Bootle is an economist and a weekly columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He is currently the Managing Director of Capital Economics, an independent macroeconomic research consultancy. After studying at Merton and Nuffield Colleges, Oxford, Bootle began his career in the academic world as a lecturer in Economics at St Anne s College, Oxford. He worked as an economist for Capel-Cure Myers and Lloyds Merchant Bank. From 1989 until 1998, he was an economist at Midland Bank/HSBC, rising to the position of Group Chief Economist of the HSBC group. During the John Major government in the 1990s, he was appointed to the UK treasury s panel of economic forecasters under Kenneth Clarke. Bootle founded Capital Economics in 1999.