The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, has promised a "massive amplification" of state-backed investments in housing and infrastructure. Words only. But if the words mean anything, they amount to a huge U-turn – a belated acknowledgment that austerity has not brought recovery. The realisation that austerity is having a dampening effect on economic activity has … Continue reading Nick Clegg’s U-turn for the better
Category: Journalism
Why China Won’t Rule
Is China poised to become the world’s next superpower? This question is increasingly asked as China’s economic growth surges ahead at more than 8% a year, while the developed world remains mired in recession or near-recession. China is already the world’s second largest economy, and will be the largest in 2017. And its military spending … Continue reading Why China Won’t Rule
How Keynes would solve the eurozone crisis
Co-authored with Marcus Miller Almost 100 years ago, a young official in the UK Treasury sought to advise European policy makers on how daunting external debts might best be managed. There was, he argued, a limit to the national capacity to service debts. Those expecting further payments were bound to be disappointed. More than that, … Continue reading How Keynes would solve the eurozone crisis
Down with Debt Weight
Nearly four years after the start of the global financial crisis, many are wondering why economic recovery is taking so long. Indeed, its sluggishness has confounded even the experts. According to the International Monetary Fund, the world economy should have grown by 4.4% in 2011, and should grow by 4.5% in 2012. In fact, the … Continue reading Down with Debt Weight
Rethinking how we teach economics: study economic history
The most important steps to improve the training of young economists would be to make economic history and the history of economic thought compulsory in all undergraduate teaching of economics. Both survive, if at all, as curricular options that the brightest are discouraged from taking. The rich history of economic thought has been replaced by … Continue reading Rethinking how we teach economics: study economic history
Why Fair Trade?
Historically, the term “fair trade” has meant many things. The Fair Trade League was founded in Britain in 1881 to restrict imports from foreign countries. In the United States, businesses and labor unions use “fair trade” laws to construct what economist Joseph Stiglitz calls “barbed-wire barriers to imports.” These so called “anti-dumping” laws allow a … Continue reading Why Fair Trade?
Good and Bad Deficits
“Deficits are always bad,” thunder fiscal hawks. Not so, replies strategic investment analyst H. Wood Brock in an interesting new book, The American Gridlock. A proper assessment, Brock argues, depends on the “composition and quality of total government spending.” Government deficits incurred on current spending for services or transfers are bad, because they produce no … Continue reading Good and Bad Deficits
Does Debt Matter?
Europe is now haunted by the specter of debt. All European leaders quail before it. To exorcise the demon, they are putting their economies through the wringer. It doesn’t seem to be helping. Their economies are still tumbling, and the debt continues to grow. The credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has just downgraded the … Continue reading Does Debt Matter?
The Euro in a Shrinking Zone
The recent European Union summit was a disaster. Both Britain and Germany played the wrong game: British Prime Minister David Cameron isolated Britain from Europe, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel isolated the eurozone from reality. Had Cameron brought an economic-growth agenda to the summit, he would have been fighting for something real, and would not … Continue reading The Euro in a Shrinking Zone
Autumn statement: George Osborne’s cutting fantasy is over
In his autumn statement today the chancellor claimed it was his deficit reduction plan that enabled the British government to borrow money even more cheaply than the Germans, thus saving the taxpayer £21bn in interest rate charges over five years. Ed Balls rejoined that "he still clings to the illiterate fantasy that low long-term interest … Continue reading Autumn statement: George Osborne’s cutting fantasy is over
Robert Skidelsky 