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 […]

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 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 101 [Emile Woolf – June 2021] It is beyond dispute that Covid’s ravages are on the wane, yet resistance to freedom appears to be far more resilient than any virus. Over two short years a so-called Conservative government, egged on by persistently dismal statistical interpretations of data compiled by its medical henchmen, has […]

ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES – 99 APRIL 2021    GOVERNMENT’S WAYWARD SPENDING – IT’S OUR MONEY!   Expenditure by “Big-government” is not readily susceptible to economic calculation. Therefore it’s impossible to know whether citizens would support central or local spending proposals – and they are never consulted anyway. The result is often a massive waste of public […]

Economic Perspectives – 96           [EMILE WOOLF -7th March 2021]   GROWTH? NOT IN THIS BUDGET   We have just endured yet another March Budget in which the Chancellor sets out his strategy for balancing the nation’s expenditure plans with its available resources, principally from taxation. They are, of course, his spending priorities, and his tax-raising […]

ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES 91 – 14 NOVEMBER 2020 EMILE WOOLF Economically speaking, we are in a pickle. The blame-game is in full flow in its search for scapegoats. The most obvious culprit is, of course, the Covid virus, but it would be a huge mistake to blame that. The government’s inconstant and wavering response to Coronavirus […]

  ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES 88 – OCTOBER 2020   More than six months have elapsed since the devastating lockdown measures were first imposed on the nation, since when we have been shrouded in a fog of confusion and ineptitude. The authorities may have been acting with the best of intentions, but the only certainty is the […]

The “flawless” audit exists in the mind alone. Regulators such as the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) are therefore having to deal with the many that, in varying degrees, are flawed. However, the FRC’s practice of allowing so many years to pass before reporting their findings and punishing the culprits undoubtedly weakens its authority and blunts […]