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
Category: Journalism
An end to the Cold War?
At long last, America has decided to stop fighting the Cold War. On 1 December, the US Department of Defence approved a directive calling upon the American military to be ‘as effective in irregular warfare as it is in traditional warfare’. This means that the question of how best to fight ‘asymmetric conflicts’ will henceforth … Continue reading An end to the Cold War?
Where do we go from here?
Any great failure should force us to rethink. The present economic crisis is a great failure of the market system. As George Soros has rightly pointed out, "the salient feature of the current financial crisis is that it was not caused by some external shock like Opec… the crisis was generated by the system itself." … Continue reading Where do we go from here?
The Remedist
Among the most astonishing statements to be made by any policymaker in recent years was Alan Greenspan’s admission this autumn that the regime of deregulation he oversaw as chairman of the Federal Reserve was based on a “flaw”: he had overestimated the ability of a free market to self-correct and had missed the self-destructive power … Continue reading The Remedist
Not what the doctor ordered
Two major reports on the Russian economy were published in November by the EBRD and the World Bank. Both reports make similar diagnoses and offer the same prescriptions for Russia’s ills. Russia has not escaped the worldwide financial crisis. The stock market collapse saw $1 trillion wiped of the value of Russian companies. The non-oil … Continue reading Not what the doctor ordered
What would Keynes have done?
Expect plans for higher borrowing, tax cuts, and more spending in Monday's pre-Budget statement. With Britain sliding into depression, it is not surprising that the old Keynesian tool kit is being ransacked. But Keynesian economics is not just about fixing damaged economies. You don't need very sophisticated economics to spend your way out of a … Continue reading What would Keynes have done?
Morals and the Meltdown
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
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
Robert Skidelsky 