Chinese leaders who dismiss the Hong Kong protesters as spoilt children, unrepresentative of the people, have found an ally in some Western pundits. The same happened when Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 – the Beijing government disparaged this democratic intellectual as a stooge for introducing Western interests in China. Unfortunately […]
In London, a week ago, the clouds of denial briefly parted and some rays of reality broke through. The French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, said: ” I’m worried how the Eurozone has detached itself from from the rest of the world economy.” But there is no evidence that his anxieties will lead to anything: not a single […]
Ed Miliband, leader of the UK Labour Party, is attacking the “predator” businesses of capitalism. Banks are competing with big oil companies to be public enemy number one. The shelves of trendy bookstores from London to LA are groaning under the weight of anti-capitalist tracts. Unions, environmentalists and right-wing populists are all complaining that globalisation […]
When Germany lifted the World Cup this summer, the whole country rejoiced to “Deutschland über alles”. Its sporting triumph seemed to mirror its economic success: insofar as there really is a “global race”, Germany seemed out in front. Politicians and pundits of all stripes praise the Rhineland model. In Britain, Labour leader Ed Miliband’s economic […]
It’s the most astonishing economic statistic in Europe. Over the past four years, the United Kingdom has created more net jobs than the other 27 members of the EU put together. 1.8 million additional people have found work, and more Britons are now in employment than ever before in history. It’s true, of course, that the […]
In the 1980s, Milton Friedman used to declare that the French economy was a mystery to him: “The French government gets everything wrong, and still the country is working”. He explained such a contradiction between a statist economic policy and a decent growth rate, by the extent of fraud and black market trade. Because taxes […]
Most people have something to be disgruntled about China’s economic situation – whether it is its low consumption demand and large external surpluses, industrial overcapacity, environmental degradation, or the range of government intervention spanning from capital controls to financial repression. Pessimists have long called for the demise of the Chinese model, each focusing on a different subset of […]
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 […]
Since the Great Recession, UK household incomes have been squeezed significantly. Median household incomes were still 6.2 per cent below their pre-crisis peak at the end of 2013/14. If the financial crisis had never occurred, households might have expected to have real incomes 20 per cent higher than they do now. This squeeze on real […]
In a profoundly uncertain world, menaced by manifest dangers and by unknown unknowns, there would seem to be an obvious political calculation. In such circumstances, it would be madness to throw over arrangements and institutions which have endured for centuries while delivering prosperity and stability. Yet a significant proportion of the Scottish electorate seems prepared […]
Most of the discussion about the Scottish referendum on independence, , scheduled for September 18, 2014, has focused on the fact that as of late the pro-union forces have maintained a narrow lead, most recently at about 47 to 41 percent. What has gone less remarked as to why any reference to the 50 percent […]
“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 […]
In a scathing article this Monday, the New York Times has attacked recent free market tax reforms in Kansas. The state initiated two rounds of tax cuts in 2012 and 2013 – slashing 25% off the top rate and eliminating all taxes on business profits that are reported on individual income returns – a particularly unprecedented move. […]
In his Imagined Communities, the political scientist Benedict Anderson identifies four waves of nationalism. The first was the “creole” wars of liberation in North and South America, prompted by the policy of the European powers of barring the entry of the “creole” elite to higher official and political office. The accident of birth in the Americas seemed to […]
I view the prospects of the Chinese economy in the coming years with guarded optimism – guarded because distortions are rampant in the economy – from the vast misallocation of resources to the highly distortionary macroeconomic structure that propels a vicious cycle – but optimistic, for exactly the same reason. The existence of important and pervasive distortions means that there […]
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 […]
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