Vince Cable’s essay in the 17 January issue of the New Statesman (“Keynes would be on our side”) is the first, and very welcome, sign of a senior coalition politician being willing to engage in a serious public debate on economic policy. It is in a different intellectual league from the jejune meditations of the … Continue reading Vince Cable is working. The Coalition isn’t.

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 2008 financial crash and the shift of power from west to east raise questions about the future of capitalism. Robert Skidelsky appraises the latest thinking, from Ha-Joon Chang, Anatole Kaletsky and Ian Bremmer. 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism Ha-Joon Chang Allen Lane, 304pp, £20 Capitalism 4.0: the Birth of a New … Continue reading For a New World, New Economics

The new chancellor will find himself in the worst starting position of anyone new in that job since the Second World War. According to the Treasury, we are just starting to limp out of the "most severe and synchronised downturn since the Great Depression in the 1930s". Recovery is not secure. With the Greek crisis … Continue reading Deficit Disorder: The Keynes Solution

The Trouble With Markets: Saving Capitalism From Itself by Roger Bootle Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 282pp, £18 The Trouble With Markets, by the economist and financial analyst Roger Bootle, is the latest in a spate of books unleashed by the Great Contraction of 2007-2009. It offers a short, reliable analysis of the crisis in language that … Continue reading The Big Squeeze

John Maynard Keynes has been restored to life. Rusty Keynesian tools – larger budget deficits, tax cuts, accelerated spending programmes and other “economic stimuli” – have been brought back into use the world over to cut off the slide into depression. And they will do the job, if not next year, the year after. But … Continue reading A Thinker for our Times

Surviving Capitalism: how we learned to live with the market and remained almost human by Erik Ringmar Anthem Press, 210pp, £16.99 Erik Ringmar has written a fascinating short book about the different forms of historical resistance to capitalism. Since its earliest appearance, capitalism has called forth social arrangements designed to maintain our humanity in the … Continue reading Truck and Barter

The End of Poverty: economic possibilities for our time by Jeffrey Sachs; with a foreword by Bono Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 397pp, £20 Jeffrey Sachs has the mind of an economist but the temperament of a missionary. His thought and striving are in the service of his passion to make humans materially better off. … Continue reading Arrested Development

In Defence of Globalisation Jagdish Bhagwati Oxford University Press, 324pp, £17.99 ISBN 0195170253 Why Globalisation Works Martin Wolf Yale University Press, 398pp, £19.99 These two books offer a defence of globalisation against its critics. Both cover much the same ground, though with differing emphases. Martin Wolf, a noted economics columnist at the Financial Times, has … Continue reading Engine of Growth

The Bubble of American Supremacy by George Soros Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 224pp, £12.99 Having made a fortune as a financier and then given much of it away in philanthropy, George Soros has embarked on a new career as a guru. He urgently wants to put his mouth where his money is. He looks at our … Continue reading The Global Guru