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A sticky mess for economists
I have spent a fair amount of my leisure time racing on sailing boats, where one becomes paranoid about wasting the wind, the tide or ones position on the water. This is in stark contrast to the rest...
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Float my boat?
The image of a rising tide lifting all the boats is a picture politicians like to paint – a fair recession and recovery, the reality maybe that the posh yachts and the scruff dinghies may be okay but...
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Selling England by the Pound
The English are having a bad year, we are on the brink of losing our last meaningful colony and these storm blasted islands have endured the worst weather on record and we are only in April! Despite...
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Let Them Eat Cake
The key to good economics is timing, Adam Smith was banging on about pins when pins where the last word in precision technology, Keynes was lucky to be at the height of his powers when the world needed...
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Believing in Secular Stagnation
Across the fault lines of Adam Smith and Keynes, those who take an interest in the global economy fall into two camps - those who are general optimistic about humankind’s instinctive ability to create...
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La Belle Époque - revisited
As we remember 1914 and the horrific shock that World War inflicted on Europe and the terrible waste of life the two World Wars inflicted it might also be sensible to recognise the economic shockwaves...
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Central Bankers - from heroes to zeros
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the only institution to call the financial crisis in 2007, has weighed back into the macro economic debate in the last few days in its annual report. The...
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Janet Yellen - barking up the wrong tree
Over the last 40 years (well up until 2008) the role of central bankers was pretty clear – keep inflation under control - and it’s no surprise that during the great inflationary period 1970-2000...
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Where no hawks dare to fly
The doves at the Fed led by the chief "cooer" Janet Yellen have found a new reason to keep interest rates at an historical low. Not a hawk in sightThe latest buzz words are “Pent up wage deflation” and...
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Germany's most important export is unemployment
Some time ago I posted a short piece entitled Austerity may be Wunderbar, the simple message in this blog was that Germany was the problem in the EuroZone not the solution. Having joined the Euro at a...
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Bonny Prince Alex
Prior to the union with England Scotland had a long and glorious tradition of following the wrong leader and creating the wrong alliances and this poor judgement eventually created the need for union...
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Cutting Taxes and Axing Osborne
In 2010 the Tories had plan A, deficit reduction, and by and large the British public bought the idea, which was simple, “We have to cut the deficit because sky-high public debt will kill growth and...
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The IMF gives more poor advice
The IMF have made some interesting pronouncements over the last few years – having missed the credit crunch and the “great recession” that followed they at first endorsed the UKs plan A and then...
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Solving Secular Stagnation
There is now a sense of gloom that pervades the corridors of power in the developed world, six years on from the Lehman Brothers' default and the ensuing “great recession” we are still in the economic...
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Time up for QE
No one really understands it and because of this opinions are all the more divided and intransigent. Despite this incoherence the market has understood enough to know that it drives asset prices and...
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What a hedgehog knows
When, in 1948, Mikhail Naimy wrote “The more elaborate his labyrinths, the further from the Sun his face” he was already living in a world that was being over-run by complexity. Most of the greatest...
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Winning the productivity race
Seven years on from the start of the Great Recession the slump looks set to go on and on. Even David Cameron who seldom mentions the economy was stirred this week to reinforce the message that - the...
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Floating free from Germany
Mario Drahgi has called for more integration and “sweeping powers” for the ECB to control fiscal policies and efforts to reform the Eurozone's economy. Is this “joined-up” thinking is a throw-back to...
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Crude benefits of falling oil prices
The ending of QE in the US and the fall in the price of oil from over $115 a barrel to under $60 a barrel were the defining economic events of 2014, but their consequences will not be felt until next...
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Demand for the old normal
For the last six years the developed world has been suffering from a chronic shortage of demand: demand for goods, demand and services, demand for investment. The need to deleverage personal,...
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