Scandinavia provides the evidence for Osborne’s war on welfare

George Osborne’s budget has been met with predictable outrage from the poverty lobby.  The cuts to the welfare budget will allegedly create shocking levels of deprivation.  Young people in particular, it is stated, have been singled out for punitive measures.  On the face of it, the arguments do seem plausible.  Many people on benefits will […]

Guaranteed bank deposits and the market for lemons

One aspect of the Greek crisis which will affect many readers is the reduction in the amount of cash in a bank deposit which is protected.  The Bank of England announced that the current guaranteed amount of £85,000 will be cut to £75,000 on 1 January.  This has led to predictable outrage, with Andrew Tyrie […]

Short termism in Financial Markets

There has been an immense focus on the Financial Sector in the years since the 2008 Financial Crisis, and rightly so. It was the worst since the Great Depression of 1929 and systemic risks in the financial sector contributed heavily to the depth of the recession. Since then there have been Libor scandals, misselling claims, […]

Supply side success is a cure for the drug of deficit finance

George Osborne’s plan to run financial surpluses and use them to pay off government debt has been met with the usual set of whinges and whines, mainly from academic economists funded by the taxpayer. Of course, their arguments are based purely on what they believe to be the intellectual merits of their case.  One of […]

Why the financial system has the same qualities as cancer

Massive fines for banks, gross misbehaviour, huge bonuses for failure, bailouts at vast expense to the taxpayer: it’s little wonder that politicians and pundits can almost invariably win cheap applause by describing the financial system as being a cancer on society. But in a deep way, cancer and the financial system do have much in […]

Markets are good, but we need clear signals

Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of the general election result is the abuse which is now being heaped on the metropolitan liberal elite from many quarters.  Theirs is truly a difficult mind set to comprehend, based as it is on an unshakeable belief in their own omniscience. Yet this is confounded on an almost daily […]

Day care for dogs and the output gap

I am keen on dogs. Recently, I have seen an advert for a special canine toothbrush designed to get rid of the pet’s bad breath, surely a difficult challenge given what dogs get up to. Vans promoting home beauty visits for dogs have proliferated for some time now. A new service being promoted is day […]

Capitalism is stable and resilient

The financial crisis did succeed in creating one dynamic new industry.  Since the late 2000s, there has been a massive upsurge in op-ed pieces, books and even artistic performances offering a critique of capitalism. A founder member of the Monty Python team, Terry Jones, is the latest to get in on the act with his […]

Why is inflation so low?

Zero inflation is trending. The consumer price index in the UK was at the same level in February as it was a year earlier. The reporting of this figure on the BBC website created some unintended amusement, however. The drop to zero, we were told, was “sharper than many analysts had expected”. And what was […]

Do Budgets really matter?

All eyes will be on George Osborne’s Budget today. An immense amount of media attention and serious commentary will be devoted to it. But do Budgets really matter? How much difference would it make if successive chancellors simply did nothing, apart from indexing various allowances and benefits in line with inflation? From time immemorial, British […]