ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES – 113 [MARCH 2022]   UKRAINE CRISIS – AN OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS   Last month I wrote about the massive waste implicit in government-sponsored bureaucracy – at local and central levels. The craving for a sense of importance leads small-minded apparatchiks to seize power over others by controlling their expenditure budgets. It works both […]

Reality begins to dawn   Shortly before the Chancellor’s Spring Statement, BBC2’s “Newsnight” featured Kirsty Wark interviewing two economic experts, one Conservative, one Labour. She asked each of them to describe the measures they would recommend to the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak. I found it difficult to follow their arguments because any semblance of clear thought […]

Economic Perspectives – 112 (Part 2)   [EMILE WOOLF, FEBRUARY 2022]   In Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass” Humpty Dumpty tells Alice: “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”   Humpty’s subjective approach to verbal meanings is of little relevance to economic writing – although […]

Economic Perspectives 112 – February 2022 – Emile Woolf                                                        ——————————————– Part 1 – Idiocy repeated   Any catalogue of economic legends would of course include the 2008 visit of Queen Elizabeth to the London School of Economics, when the country was experiencing an unprecedented housing market bubble based on the irrational belief […]

Economic Perspectives 111 – 1 January 2022– Emile Woolf Why governments practise currency debasement – and how to cure them [With my gratitude to Patrick Barron for his inspiration and insights I have written on the subject of currency debasement many times, but it is now reaching crunch-time – even for the pound, dollar, yen […]

EMILE WOOLF ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES – 109 [November 2021] Veteran observers of economic folly have the advantage of experience. They are already familiar with the failed policies being enacted, yet again, by unprincipled politicians whose sole motivation is re-election. In the meanwhile these pillars of ineptitude, incapable of linking cause and effect, remain blind to the […]

ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES – 105 Conventional wisdom maybe – but it’s never the truth Whether it’s the belief that commitment to more infrastructure spending by the state will create more jobs; or that import tariffs are needed to protect domestic industries; or that currency manipulation can boost exports; or that a statistical figment called GDP can […]

WHEN SUPPLIERS PREFER THEIR GOODS TO OUR POUNDS [ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES 106 – OCTOBER 2021]   Following his interview with Vladimir Lenin on the subject of inflation in 1919, John Maynard Keynes quoted the Russian as having said “The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch its currency”, and Keynes included Lenin’s comment […]

    “Conservative” government?……if only! [ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES – 104]   The Conservative government has strayed so far from the principles on which it was elected that it is scarcely recognisable as the party most people voted for.   Its colour on the political spectrum has undergone a blue-to-red shift with welfare-for-all at the top of […]

ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES – 103 The great debate now obsessing Treasury bosses and central bankers is whether all those trillions they continue to print so obsessively are at last producing a perceptible bout of hyperinflation. Before trying to make sense of that question let’s revisit some basics.    1 – What is inflation? Although “inflation” usually […]