This article was originally published by the Foundation for Economic Education, and can be found here. Affordable energy is fundamental to what economist Deirdre McCloskey calls the “Great Fact” of the explosion of human welfare. It remains central to the reduction of absolute poverty. Yet, some Western governments are working to increase energy costs, purportedly to […]
Margaret Thatcher was the first leader of any major developed nation to call for a global treaty to address climate change in her speech to the UN in 1989. As a Conservative, and a professional scientist, she recognised the dangers of idleness and the advantages of acting sooner rather than later. She also wouldn’t have […]
Energy policy exemplifies the contradictions of the new politics. The three main UK parties are in furious agreement about its essentials; yet Labour wants to make it a big dividing line in the election. Labour leader Ed Miliband says he wants more competition; as energy and climate secretary, the same Miliband’s 2010 Energy Act downgraded […]
In his seminal editorial masterpiece Software is Eating the World, venture capitalist and tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen makes the point that software is quickly penetrating, and disrupting, broad swaths of the global economy. Everything from agriculture to online government is beginning to see benefits from the application of software development. The world is now, more […]
I love the Guardian. Ok, that’s not entirely true. I was raised reading the Guardian and while my views on politics and economics have “evolved” considerably in the last twenty-five years, I still have a residual respect for the place, despite the way in which it seems to have come to despise the newspaper and […]
Will the Energy Union package become a tool to make energy more affordable, secure, and sustainable in Europe? Or will it kick off a new wave of regulation? Much will depend on the implementation—as is often the case. On Wednesday, February 25th, the EU Commission released a package of three communications that address, respectively, the […]
Daniel Yurgin’s magnificent, definitive global history of oil presents the industry in proper perspective. Despite “The Prize” being a giant door-stopper of a book, it somehow rattles along mixing thrilling narrative and colourful personalities with science, economics and social history. By the time you get to the end of Yurgin’s masterwork, the 20th century makes a […]
Yesterday, the United States Congress passed comprehensive legislation on the Keystone XL Pipeline. That ambitious project is designed to carry over 800,000 barrels along a 1,117 route from Canada to Texas through five other America states. Keystone has been mired in regulatory review in the United States since 2008. The proposed Congressional legislation does two things. First, […]
The leader of the opposition in Britain used to have a little routine he went through whenever an opponent said anything he disagreed with. He would shake his head slowly, as though the gesture was being undertaken more in sorrow than in anger, and then slowly he would utter the dreaded phrase: “He… just… doesn’t… […]
The dramatic recession in Russia and the brutal impoverishment of the Russian consumers after the fall of the Ruble is no accident. President Putin tries to save his face, his power and his national model by pretending that oil prices go up and down. He may be right to a certain extent but he does […]
The following joke is doing the rounds in Moscow: what do Putin, the ruble and a barrel of oil have in common? They all hit 63 this year. Amusing as this is, Russia faces a serious problem. The further oil prices fall, the further the ruble falls. The further the ruble falls, the more expensive […]
Venezuela’s economy The groundwork for the risk of default has been laid gradually over the past 15 years of Hugo Chávez’s government and patterns continue under his successor Nicholas Maduro. With inflation hitting over 60% by July this year, the currency is wildly over-valued and increasingly worthless to foreign investors and local consumers alike. Despite […]
The abrupt collapse in oil prices shows that however unyielding Saudis may be in matters of faith, in business they are consummate practitioners of the art of setting prices flexibly. It has been ever thus. John Burckhardt in 1831 published Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys, an early account how the Arab economy was run […]
Oil prices, today at $78 a barrel, have fallen from a high of over $115 earlier this year, creating difficulties for a number of producer countries. OPEC will meet tomorrow in Vienna to agree production quotas for its members. Here are 4 things you need to know about tomorrow’s OPEC meeting. 1. Oil producers are struggling to […]
As oil prices remain depressed, my Centre for Policy Studies paper from March, ‘Deploying the Saudi Oil Weapon’, appears prescient. The aim of this article, however, is not to crow, but to examine the reasons for falling oil prices, and to look at why we need cheap oil for as long as it is feasible to […]
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