Hiding behind big numbers
byHiding behind the big numbers. One million seconds is 11 days. One billion seconds is 32 years. One trillion seconds is 32,000 years. It…
Broke bank mountain
by“During the 17th century, Scottish investors had noticed with envy the gigantic profits being made in trade with Asia and Africa by the English…
Politicians who promise jam and sweeties today…
byNow that the Euro Crisis Train is arriving back into the station after a short trip away from the front pages, there will shortly…
Euro shorts smell blood
byWithin the eurozone there are great stresses. At one extreme there are punitive costs of borrowing for Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy;…
The monetary policy politburo
byIn a fascinating 30-minute interview, David Stockman – a former Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan – discusses…
Mass exit from poverty
by(co-authored with Bill Glod) Do the poor have too many choices? MIT economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo answer in the affirmative in their…
Happy interventionists: the economist’s attack on your property
byLast week, DIW – the Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (German Institute for Economic Research) – an influential think tank, proposed an ingenious solution to…
Corporate giants rarely outlast their usefulness
byIn this article for City A.M. I discuss Joseph Schumpeter’s concept of “creative destruction”, and why Karl Marx was wrong to suppose that capitalism…
Santayana’s Curse – The Grapes of Wrath
byOur final excerpt from Chapter 2 of Santayana’s Curse. Continued from Timeo Danaos (et Romanos). … this was to be the high point of Italian…
Hugh Hendry v. Joseph Stiglitz
byI received this YouTube clip from a friend of the Cobden Centre and I think it is fantastic. It shows the fundamental banality of…