Every time the dollar slides in the international currency markets, people predict the death of the mighty dollar. No one, they say, will want to go on investing in a depreciating currency. The age of the dollar has come to an end. Its successor will be a multi-polar currency system, with the dollar, the euro, … Continue reading The death of the dollar?
Author: Robert Skidelsky
Economist and member of the House of Lords
Moscow needs its own congestion charge
One of the first Russian words I learnt was ‘probka’, or traffic jam. It must take longer to get round Moscow by car than any other city in the world. Not only do the big roads lead you in the opposite direction from where you want to go; there are far too many cars on … Continue reading Moscow needs its own congestion charge
Population and ageing
‘It’s population, stupid’. According to an eighteenth century English clergyman, the Revd Thomas Malthus, this was the key to the great movements of history. As industrialisation spread, the fear of overpopulation declined. In the rich countries, productivity raced ahead of fertility. It was assumed that sooner or later the population of the rest of the … Continue reading Population and ageing
The Unresolved Debate on Capital Flight
By Robert Skidelsky and Pavel Erochkine Is capital flight a problem for Russia? Most people would say "yes" and would regard the recent reversal of capital flight as a positive sign for the Russian economy. But there is another school of thought that believes that capital movements should be a matter of complete indifference and … Continue reading The Unresolved Debate on Capital Flight
The Killing Fields
Changes in the character of war partially account for the mass murders of the past century. But the rise of democracy also plays a role. Why did the 20th century produce so much mass killing of civilians - a phenomenon so terrible and unexpected that it caused a new word, "genocide", to be coined to … Continue reading The Killing Fields
The War in Iraq: a Just War?
The most important event of 2003 was the American-led war on Iraq. The legality of this action has been much disputed. At this season of the year, a moral accounting is appropriate. The Western Christian tradition accepts that war may be justified under certain circumstances. To what extent does the attack on Iraq satisfy the … Continue reading The War in Iraq: a Just War?
European Defence: A Crazy Situation
‘It is unsatisfactory that 450 million Europeans rely so much on 250 million Americans to defend them’. So wrote the British diplomat Robert Cooper in a recently-published book. On 12-13 December the heads of government of EU members and candidate members -25 in all - will be meeting in Brussels to agree a new European … Continue reading European Defence: A Crazy Situation
Essay: Confessions of a long-distance biographer
It is no secret that I have spent a large chunk of my life writing about the economist John Maynard Keynes. In 1973, a few months after my son Edward was born, he got a postcard from my mother-in-law. She clearly believed in encouraging early habits of reading. It was of Gwen Raverat's famous watercolour … Continue reading Essay: Confessions of a long-distance biographer
Terrorism, WMD and Hypocrisy
A spectre is haunting the world: that of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This is the collective name for nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The United States and Britain said they attacked Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from using or developing them. Even more terrifying is the thought that they may be acquired by terrorist … Continue reading Terrorism, WMD and Hypocrisy
A Janus-faced World
The Breaking of Nations: order and chaos in the 21st century by Robert Cooper Atlantic Books, 180pp, £14.99 International relations may or may not be in a mess; the theory of international relations certainly is. The old theory was that the world consists of "states" which exist in an "international anarchy". It was an "anarchy" … Continue reading A Janus-faced World
Robert Skidelsky 