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By Andy Duncan, on 2 November 10
Last week, I interviewed Dr Richard Wellings for Cobden Centre Radio about George Osborne’s Comprehensive Spending Review, announced recently by the UK’s coalition government. Dr Wellings is the deputy editorial director of the Institute of Economic Affairs, editor of their blog, and a senior fellow with the Cobden Centre. In this 22-minute interview we discuss quangos, foreign aid, the ring-fencing of the NHS, possible state privatisations, taxation, regulation, the presumed growth targets which are needed to make the whole thing work, and most other aspects of the review, including how it may be related to quantitative easing and how Dr Wellings thinks it will all pan out:
[At one point in the interview we discuss the great Peter Thomas Bauer and his ideas on developmental aid. For those interested in Bauer's ideas on foreign aid and international inter-government welfare, there is a great review page on Wikipedia.]
By Andy Duncan, on 30 October 10
A professionally-shot and edited video of Cobden Centre Senior Fellow Jesús Huerta de Soto’s recent scintillating and inspirational speech at the LSE, delivered on the 28th of October, 2010, will be available soon at the Cobden Centre. In the meantime, Brian Micklethwait and I thought that we would release an audio podcast preview of this speech on Cobden Centre Radio, to share and spread the message of this incredible Promethean bearer of the economic torch of Ludwig von Mises, himself a Promethean bearer of the torch of the University of Salamanca, led by the Spanish theologians, rooted in the scholastic work of Francisco de Vitoria, brought to us through the ages and linking us through to Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle.
Look forward to the video; in the meantime, here is the complete speech as recorded via the technical wizardry of Brian with his Zoom H2 Handy recorder and some guerilla recording techniques as employed in the Sheikh Zayed theatre, at the London School of Economics, for the 2010 Hayek Memorial Lecture, as sponsored by Toby Baxendale, our Cobden Centre Chairman; Professor Huerta de Soto is introduced by Professor Tim Besley of the LSE:
The full text of the speech can be found here.
There is an alternative MP3 recording of the speech, provided by the LSE, which you can listen to here.
[By the way, listen out for the spontaneous break out of applause towards the end of the lecture when Huerta de Soto calls for a 'Bank of Amsterdam'-style return to a 100% monetary reserve standard based upon gold.]
By Andy Duncan, on 28 October 10
In a fascinating 36 minute interview, Cobden Centre Radio’s very own Brian Micklethwait speaks to James Tyler, the Chief Executive of Tyler Capital and a member of our Cobden Centre advisory board.
Describing the world through the educated eyes of a practical businessman, Tyler describes the 2008 crash and how this brought him gradually towards the Austrian school of economics. After uncovering these free market foundations, Tyler walks through several major aspects of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory, malinvestments, and the repercussions of government interference as executed via Gosplan-style central planning boards over the last few years, while adding a few unique and interesting observations of his own.
Moving on to how the economic land lies now, Tyler discusses how we could move forward from where we are now but what he thinks global governments will do instead, thereby keeping us in depressed financial straits for perhaps some time to come, using the Japanese two lost decades as a model for what they will probably do.
However, he does see light at the end of the tunnel and describes how we can ignite this light.
The James Tyler article mentioned in the radio show above, can be found here:
By Andy Duncan, on 7 October 10
Tonight on Cobden Centre Radio I interview Professor Kevin Dowd, a Senior Fellow with the Cobden Centre, and one of Britain’s best known free market economists, who has also worked over several decades with the Cato Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, and the Libertarian Alliance. We range over several subjects, over a slightly antediluvian broadband link, but concentrate specifically on the outlook for the British economy over the next few years, where perhaps it might be going, and how to fix both our short-term and long-term economic problems with the policies of sound money, sound corporate governance, and sound personal responsibility.
In the interview we also briefly discuss Professor Dowd’s most recent book, ‘The Alchemists of Loss: How Modern Finance and Government Intervention Crashed the Financial System’, written in conjunction with Martin Hutchinson, which is available from Amazon and all good bookshops.
By Andy Duncan, on 29 September 10
In our latest 26-minute Cobden Centre Radio show, I interview Steve Baker MP about his Austrian path into the world of politics and how he thinks we can inject financial sanity into the economically diseased global body of Keynesian orthodoxy. Touching upon the Douglas Carswell bill, due for its second reading in November, we also discussed how the British state can be rolled back, and where he thinks the British economy is heading, and how he thinks we can turn everything around to create an honest monetary system and a reduced government.
At the end of the interview, Steve also mentions a new TV documentary by Wag TV, due to be broadcast on Channel4 on the 21st of October, immediately following the coalition government’s comprehensive spending review, as a commentary upon the state of Britain’s finances. As Wag TV have produced some of my favourite documentaries in recent years, and as Steve may be playing a significant role in this new documentary about the British economy, Cobden Centre subscribers may want to book this date in their diaries for a rare night in with the TV. In the meantime, here is our fourth home-grown radio show:
Alternatively, try our podcast:
By Andy Duncan, on 15 September 10
In our third Cobden Centre Radio show, Brian Micklethwait spends a full hour interviewing Toby Baxendale about his plan for monetary reform in the United Kingdom:
This interview is divided into a pair of related segments:
- Toby answers Brian’s first question about ‘What has been going on?’ in the last 200 years of Britain’s evolving monetary system — Up to 38 minutes
- Toby answers Brian’s second question concerning ‘What can we do about it?’, to turn our smoke-and-mirrors centrally-planned monetary system into an open honest free-market monetary system — 38 minutes and onwards
This comprehensive interview was originally recorded before the general election, this year, and later released onto Brian Micklethwait’s own blog on August the 27th.
[As the interview was carried out at Toby's place of business, there is some background factory plant noise in the second half of the programme, but this is the sound of productivity at work, so all good Austrians should find it comforting rather than intrusive.]
Once again, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mr Micklethwait for allowing us to re-broadcast both volumes of his biathlon interview session with Toby.
If you missed the previous episodes, you can catch up with them through the links below:
Better yet, subscribe to our podcast!
By Andy Duncan, on 13 September 10
In our second Cobden Centre Radio show, Brian Micklethwait interviews Toby Baxendale about Toby’s formative background and how this helped him reach towards the intellectual ideas of liberty, entrepreneurialism, and the eventual creation of the Cobden Centre; in collaboration with our other founders:
This interview was originally recorded on Friday the 13th, in November of 2009. I would like to thank Brian Micklethwait, one of Britain’s foremost fighters for liberty, for allowing us to re-broadcast this excellent interview.
A second interview between Brian and Toby will follow soon, covering an initial plan of banking reform.
By Andy Duncan, on 9 September 10
Everybody’s doing it — even educated fleas are doing it — so we thought we better produce our own multi-media content and produce our own radio show under the glorious and highly imaginative brand name of ‘Cobden Centre Radio’. Our Chief Executive Officer, Tim Evans, graciously allowed me to maul him with a combination of Skype, Audio Hijack Pro, and Garageband, as combined together on a MacBook, for our first ever Cobden Centre Radio Show.
In the interview, Dr Evans discusses his personal views on how the Cobden Centre came together, its aims and purposes, where he sees its future heading, and how regular readers and listeners can help us with our funding. Future shows will include interviews with Toby Baxendale, Steven Baker MP, plus many others, and will focus mainly on a Euro-centric or UK-centric viewpoint, as regards the free market, Austrian economics, and all of the other regular topics which we generally cover at the Cobden Centre, to complement the more usual US-centric views of excellent shows such as the Financial Sense hour, King World Radio, Lew Rockwell Radio, Mises Institute media, and Mr Peter Schiff’s regular video blogs. As the Americans say; Enjoy:
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