Last month, while in New York City, I happened to be staying in the same hotel as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. To accommodate his security needs, the hotel had been converted into a fortress, much like Israel itself. Netanyahu was in the United States for yet another round of Middle East peace talks. The … Continue reading A Confederal Solution for Palestine
Author: Robert Skidelsky
Economist and member of the House of Lords
Beyond the Crash: Overcoming the First Crisis of Globalisation by Gordon Brown
The phrase "horses for courses" is as valid for politics as for other activities. It's as impossible to think of Gordon Brown at the recent Fifa meeting in Zurich pleading England's cause for the World Cup as it is to imagine David Cameron expounding the nitty-gritty of capital adequacy ratios at a meeting of the … Continue reading Beyond the Crash: Overcoming the First Crisis of Globalisation by Gordon Brown
The Irrepressible 1930’s
The just concluded G-20 meeting in Seoul broke up without agreement on either currencies or trade. China and the United States accused each other of deliberately manipulating their currencies to get a trade advantage. The Doha Round of global trade talks remain stalled. And, amid talk of the “risks” of new currency and trade wars, … Continue reading The Irrepressible 1930’s
A golden opportunity for monetary reform
Three cheers for Robert Zoellick. Writing in the FT this week, the World Bank president set out an ambitious agenda for the Group of 20 leading economies to “rebalance demand” and “spur growth”. He recognises that the reduction of current account imbalances is a necessary condition for a non-protectionist trading system. Global imbalances lie at … Continue reading A golden opportunity for monetary reform
When confidence is shattered
I. In economics, you cannot convict your opponents of error, but only convince them. Economics isn’t like physics; you can’t conduct controlled experiments to prove or disprove your theories. History provides a very partial way of overcoming this weakness. No events repeat themselves exactly, but past events offer some kind of test of current theories … Continue reading When confidence is shattered
The Wars of Austerity
I have become increasingly less hopeful about prospects for a rapid recovery from the global recession. Coordinated fiscal expansion ($5 trillion) by the world’s leading governments arrested the downward slide, but failed to produce a healthy rebound. The current frustration is summed up by The Economist’s recent cover headline: “Grow, dammit, grow.” There are two … Continue reading The Wars of Austerity
Britain’s Austerity Apostles Duck the Debate
Next week the parliamentary battle over cuts will start up again. The chancellor, George Osborne, will say the government’s programme of fiscal retrenchment is necessary to “restore confidence”. Alan Johnson, his shadow, will say it threatens the “fragile recovery”. The government plans to cut public spending by 10 per cent over four years as part … Continue reading Britain’s Austerity Apostles Duck the Debate
Keynes: The Return of the Master
Keynes: The Return of the Master shows how the great economist's ideas not only explain why the current financial crisis occurred - but are our best way out. 'One would expect brokers to be wrong. If, in addition to their other inside advantages, they were capable of good advice, clearly they would have retired long … Continue reading Keynes: The Return of the Master
Austerity v Stimulus
The Northern Ireland Economic Conference, Belfast I. How much do people mind the deficit? Do they lie awake at night worrying about it? Do they have nightmares about it? I tended to dismiss such thoughts as fanciful. Households and businesses, I thought, naturally worried about their own budgets, but not about the government’s budget. I … Continue reading Austerity v Stimulus
Russia Debates Its Future
Russia is said by many to lack a “civil society.” But it partly makes up for this by having a rather interesting public sphere, in which serious topics do get debated, and where glimpses of the great are not entirely confined to televised snippets. The first fortnight in September saw successive meetings of two major … Continue reading Russia Debates Its Future
Robert Skidelsky 