After World War I, H.G. Wells wrote that a race was on between morality and destruction. Humanity had to abandon its warlike ways, Wells said, or technology would decimate it. Economic writing, however, conveyed a completely different world. Here technology was deservedly king. Prometheus was a benevolent monarch who scattered the fruits of progress among … Continue reading Morals and the Meltdown
Author: Robert Skidelsky
Economist and member of the House of Lords
Fixing Russia’s foreign relations
Russia’s credit markets may have remained frozen these last few weeks but its foreign relations have begun to thaw. Foreign investors have yet to return after pulling out their money in the wake of the invasion of Georgia, but foreign diplomats are back. At the end of October, Peter Mandelson, Britain’s business minister and a … Continue reading Fixing Russia’s foreign relations
A dangerous free-for-all
By Robert Skidelsky and Vijay Joshi Next Saturday world leaders meet in Washington to discuss new rules for the global financial system (though little will be achieved with President-elect Obama absent). So far, thinking about this matter has scarcely got beyond calls for better banking regulation: a microeconomic issue that is doubtless important but misses … Continue reading A dangerous free-for-all
Crisis-hit Russia must scale down its ambition
The official view is that Russia is an outstandingly successful economy temporarily derailed by a financial shock of foreign origin. Its annual economic growth in real terms averaged 7 per cent in the years during which Vladimir Putin was president (2000-08), annual real wages rose by almost 15 per cent, the federal budget was continually … Continue reading Crisis-hit Russia must scale down its ambition
An impossible crash brought Keynes back to life
When Alistair Darling said that “much of what Keynes wrote still makes sense”, anyone under 40 might well have asked: “And who on earth is Keynes”? When I first started writing about him in the early 1970s, John Maynard Keynes was a name to conjure with - not in the league of Led Zeppelin, to … Continue reading An impossible crash brought Keynes back to life
Essay: Keynes is Back
I have always said that Keynes would live as long as the world needed him. What the world decided, 30 years ago, was that it no longer needed him. The Keynesian revolution had been reduced to a mechanical system for stabilising economies by means of budget surpluses and deficits—more deficits than surpluses, as it turned … Continue reading Essay: Keynes is Back
No endgame for America
America’s current financial distress has been greeted by Russian nationalists with ill-concealed satisfaction. It shows, they say, how rotten American capitalism is: sweet revenge for the ideological defeat of communism. America’s geopolitical moment, they also claim, has passed into history: we now live in a multi-polar world, in which Russia will take its place as … Continue reading No endgame for America
Kipling’s Wisdom
The beginning of October marked the seventh anniversary of the beginning of the American-led bombardment of Afghanistan. Seven years later, the Taliban are still fighting. Some 50 insurgents died recently in an assault on Lashkar gar, the capital of Helmand province. Osama bin Laden is nowhere to be found. Has the time come for NATO … Continue reading Kipling’s Wisdom
Essay: We Forgot Everything Keynes Taught Us
No one can complain of a shortage of information about the Great Financial Meltdown. The biggest growth industry today is words: A whole new vocabulary has spread from board tables to kitchen tables. Superannuated whiz kids planting cabbages to offset their newly straitened means can blame their troubles on collateralized debt obligations, special investment vehicles, … Continue reading Essay: We Forgot Everything Keynes Taught Us
Russia can help itself by helping the world
On 7 October, President Medvedev made his first video podcast. He had a serious message, ‘the crisis of the international financial system demands urgent joint action.’ On 8 October, standing alongside President Sarkozy at Evian, he proposed a new security pact to resolve the stand-off over Nato expansion. Both these proposals are intended to bolster … Continue reading Russia can help itself by helping the world
Robert Skidelsky 