ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES – 80 [GOING POSTAL – 1st June 2020] EMILE WOOLF In his latest book (“The Body – a Guide for Occupants”) Bill Bryson highlights the limitations on what money can buy. He points out, for example, that America spends more per capita on healthcare than any other nation in the world: two-and-a-half […]

ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES – 78 and GOING POSTAL It’s not quite like having to start the economy from scratch, but this lockdown-induced recession warrants some detached assessment. We are aware that viable businesses have been forced to close their doors – or keep them open to serve a paltry trickle of customers. This has been happening […]

  Well, are we? In the course of more than four weeks of self/family isolation we have all encountered mountains of speculation on the sources of Covid-19; how it spreads; estimates of its final tally of victims; how many people already have antibodies and immunity; time-frames for each phase of its progress; Ro spread-estimates; international […]

ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES – 76 Can lost production ever be recovered? EMILE WOOLF – APRIL 2020 It’s easy to blame Covid-19 virus for the nation’s woes and, up to a point, that’s understandable. People who focus exclusively on the nation’s health tend to pay less attention to the economic damage wrought by Coronavirus, even though that […]

ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES – 75 PARTS 1 & 2 PART 1 – “SAVINGS: more important than the unstable money that measures it” I am typing this in the SAA Business Lounge of Durban airport, awaiting a call to board a flight to Johannesburg, where we are due to take the last flight to London before all […]

  Getting the principle right If government has a duty to protect the lives, property and civil liberties of its subjects, ours is currently guilty of failing to display any meaningful police presence on our streets – beyond speeding yellow cars and vans blaring ear-splitting sirens that are actually more of a menace than a […]

ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES – 72 Those still shedding tears over our departure from the EU invariably refer to the success of the EU in healing post-WW2 wounds and keeping peace in Europe for 75 years. By the same token they imply that, by leaving, we are creating a dangerous rift that threatens to spark a resurgence […]

WHERE WE ARE NOW – A FESTIVE SUMMARY Emile Woolf – December 2019 There were dire warnings….. Over and over, we heard it. We heard it from the great and good, all authoritative sources with impeccable credentials. Carney at the Bank of England, Chancellors of the Exchequer (present and past), IMF, London School of Economics, […]

  TODAY’S ELECTION – WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT Emile Woolf The looming election appears patently divisive. But it isn’t the election itself that’s doing it. The division arises from the starkness of choice confronting the nation. The very word “di-vision” almost evokes a condition of “split vision”. It could, for example, mean that the political […]

CAMPAIGN PROMISES, and a dose of reality As my regular readers know, most of my essays are forays into challenging economic issues. They reflect my own attempts to gain an understanding of their underlying principles. But there’s a lot riding on the coming election, perhaps more than most of us realise, so here are some […]