Greece is now very likely to leave the euro, as a consequence of defaulting on its debts to its Eurozone partners and the ECB. That exit will be a direct consequence of the repeated attempts to bail Greece out from 2010 onwards. In 2010, Greece faced having a bad recession, a budget out of control […]
Early 20th century industrialist Henry Ford’s famous quote “Any customer can have a car painted any colour he wants so long as it is black” would have put his automobile business in trouble today. Cars are now built in a staggering number of variations. You can pick any colour, gear box, motor or rims of […]
Sajid Javid, the UK government’s Business Secretary, recently said that the free market was the greatest force ever created for lifting people out of poverty. But, he continued, “we must not lose sight of the fact that it’s an artificial creation. It is not the natural order of things. We have to consciously choose to […]
In Britain and the United States government policy is resulting in poor job market prospects for millennials, those born between 1980 and 2000, while burdening them with obligations to pay off high levels of debt. In Britain the unemployment rate for young people ages 16 to 24 is 16 percent and in the United States […]
When I escaped communist Czechoslovakia in 1970 and enrolled at Cornell University, I was taught that becoming a billionaire was impossible – the American dream was over. The last few decades have proved this thesis from my introductory sociology course wrong. In fact, two kinds of major economic transitions in recent years produced more and […]
This article was originally published by the Foundation for Economic Education, and can be found here. Today’s world of ubiquitous mobile applications, seamless multiplatform integration, and constant social feedback would be hard to imagine a decade ago, when your new cell phone’s colored screen and grainy camera capabilities were sure to impress and perhaps begrudge […]
Hours after winning back the keys to 10 Downing Street, David Cameron told the nation that the UK stood on ‘the brink of something special’. Referencing the dire state the economy was in back at the start of his reign in 2010, Cameron continued the positive economic narrative outlined in his election campaign. If the […]
It is still less than one month since that astonishing election result, but already the idea of Ed Miliband as prime minister seems more like some kind of weird fantasy than a potential reality threatening the nation. Yet there is something rather unseemly about the speed and vigour with which those fighting for leadership of […]
Milton Friedman famously wrote in 1970 that “there is one and only one social responsibility of business… to increase its profits.” But like much in the intervening 45 years, times have changed. This narrow definition of business success is partly why capitalism is under attack. It’s no longer enough to simply create jobs and make […]
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria is one of the greatest threats to human health. If there are no effective antibiotics in health care, humanity will be thrown back to the time when urinary tract infections and pneumonia were dangerous diseases and common operations would be risky to perform. In Europe alone antibiotic resistant bacteria are estimated to kill […]
Dan Snow’s series on the Spanish Armada (Sundays, BBC2) is good on the dramatic events of 1588. But as is the nature of television, it is less good on why things happened as they did. The background to the Spanish attempt to invade England by sea actually tells us a great deal about the evolution […]
The Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang was much concerned with life after death. So concerned that by the time he died around 2,200 years ago he had created an 8,000 strong army of servants designed to do his bidding in the afterlife. The ‘terracotta army’ now familiar throughout the world was produced over several decades […]
Giant corporations are one aspect of modern capitalism that has come in for a lot of criticism in recent years. Detached from nation states, they are seen to be indifferent to concepts like job security and fair taxation. Detached from competition and accountability, they neglect customer service and allow executive pay to break the stratosphere. Big business is, […]
“These are fantastically good figures”, the official concluded. “The state of the economy is much better than predicted.” Eyes swivelled to Gordon Brown. “What am I supposed to do with this?”, he snarled. “Write them a f***ing thank you letter?” Tom Bower, Gordon Brown, HarperCollins, 2004 This was the first, but not the last, tantrum […]
For a continent containing 54 countries and 1.1 billion people Africa is often the victim of cliché and generalisation lacking proper analysis and depth. It is not the basket case it is often made out to be. But it’s fair to say that many parts of it face serious problems and deprivation is stark. In […]
When posed with the question, ‘economic liberalism: damned, discredited or indispensable?, my own view is that all three are true. Economic liberalism has been unfairly damned, wrongly discredited and remains emphatically indispensable, especially in areas where it has barely been tried. I’ll come on to the lessons from and aftermath of the financial crash shortly. […]
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