Quality counts: Marshall-Lerner and the trade balance
The balance of trade does not attract much attention these days. Maybe it should. The UK has run a deficit in traded goods every single year since 1983. In recent years, this has soared, to over £60 billion a year since 2004, exceeding 5 per cent of GDP. Fortunately, there are two substantial offsets. First, our services sector. From […]
The rapid rise of the food bank can’t just be blamed on government austerity
FOOD banks are a rapidly growing phenomenon in the UK. A few years ago, they barely existed, but an estimated half a million people now make use of them every week. On the face of it, it seems that poverty has sadly become endemic since the financial crisis, with many families unable even to feed […]
Will Barnet or Brentford ever topple Manchester United?
Manchester United have walked away with the Premiership title yet again. In the last seven seasons, they have won no fewer than five times. Over the past 22 years, they have never finished outside the top three. Will they ever be overthrown, especially given the stupendous sponsorship deal the Premiership has secured from the start of next […]
Nick Bosanquet: I was wrong to criticise Thatcher in 1981 – but she didn’t go far enough
IF ANYONE doubts Margaret Thatcher’s contribution to reversing decline, they should read Sir Douglas Wass’s remarkable book Decline to Fall. Sir Douglas, formerly permanent secretary to the Treasury, wrote extensively on the 1976 IMF crisis, when Britain was forced to beg for a £2.3bn bailout. It presents a frightening picture of policymakers living in a […]
What would Keynes have said? Ouija board active!
The loss of triple A status on UK government bonds has intensified the demands for a Plan B. So-called Keynesians demand an increase in both public spending and the public sector deficit. What might Keynes himself have said about the current situation? Lacking a Ouija board, I am unable to communicate directly with the great […]
Networks, the North and Prosperity
What can be done about the North? The gap between London and the South East grows and grows. The response of many in the political class in the North is the dispiriting whinge of entitlement. The Leader of Newcastle Council has recently attracted national publicity for his decision to cut all arts funding in the […]
Entrepreneurship and the filthy rich
Peter Mandelson famously said that he was ‘intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich’. As was the case with many aspects of New Labour, he was working firmly in the Leninist intellectual tradition. Some 20 years earlier, the then leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Deng Xiaoping, stated that ‘to get rich is glorious’. The […]
Today Singapore and Japan, Tomorrow China
It has suddenly become fashionable to be concerned about China’s growth rate slowing down. This is not a matter of a short-run cyclical downturn, with normal service being resumed shortly as the economy roars ahead once more. It is a worry that there will be a permanent slowdown by the end of this decade. Instead […]
Nick Bosanquet in the Financial Times: projections for 2013
Each New Year the Financial Times surveys a select group of policymakers, academics and commentators to gauge views on some important questions for the economy for the coming year. Volterra associate Nick Bosanquet took part in the survey in 2013. Read the full artticle published in the FT here – and take a look at […]
Springtime for America
Is America heading for a boom? Real GDP has risen for 13 successive quarters and now stands 3 per cent above its peak level. A net total of 4.8 million jobs has been created over the past three years, with a fall of half a million in the public sector being massively outweighed by the 5.3 […]
