Last week European Union foreign ministers renewed existing economic sanctions against Russia until September. Although the initially recalcitrant Greek government fell into line with other EU member states, a decision on increased sanctions was postponed and Greece is likely to remain something of a loose cannon, using collaboration in anti-Russian measures as a bargaining card […]
A recurrent debate among historians is the question: can history teach us lessons relevant to the present and future? Generally, history does not repeat itself by turning full circle, though it may move elliptically. Economic history, however, may be a special case in that it travels in recognisable cycles – boom, recession, depression, recovery – […]
It is an axiom of human behaviour that whenever a cherished ideology is discredited by experience its defeated disciples console themselves by claiming moral victory. Nowhere has sanctimonious humbug been more zealously propagated than by the adherents of dinosaur socialism in the realm of taxation. A kind of moralistic blackmail – effectively a theology rather […]
There is surely something surreal about watching the vanquished dictate terms to the victors. Yet that is what is happening as the SNP, recently defeated in Scotland’s independence referendum, dictates a new constitutional and fiscal settlement to the rest of the United Kingdom, using the so-called Smith Commission – authors of the most irresponsible document […]
A recent opinion piece published on the MarketWatch website and written by Paul B Farrell carried the headline “Ayn Rand vs. Adam Smith: the only midterm election that counts.” While this antithesis between Rand and Smith is an established debate among economists, Farrell’s article placed it in an aggressively political context and attached a level […]
Anyone who has reflected in this anniversary year on the causes of the First World War will recognize that the one consensual view among all historians is to refer to “causes” in the plural. That is because every cataclysm that occurs in human affairs invariably has more than one origin. Yet there is always a […]
“It’s the economy, stupid.” The mantra coined by James Carville for Bill Clinton’s 1992 election campaign and adopted by western politicians has largely lost credibility among analysts of next year’s British general election prospects; but it may be regaining relevance in the context of the current Scottish independence referendum. Seldom has a solitary opinion poll […]
Financial scandals these days are like buses: another one comes along every minute. The ripples from Libor have not yet settled, but now the Serious Fraud Office has launched a criminal investigation into allegations about rigging of the £3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange markets by traders at City banks. For all those critics denouncing the evils […]
