Whatever it is, Corbynomics is not mainstream

A group of economists hit the headlines last week with their claim that Jeremy Corbyn’s policies are supported by mainstream economics.  Perhaps the best known of them is David Blanchflower, a Monetary Policy Committee member when Gordon Brown was Chancellor.  He predicted before the 2010 General Election that under the Conservatives, unemployment would rise from […]

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 […]

Recovery and summer are in the air, but doom mongers still lurk

The GDP growth figures announced last week for the second quarter of this year have sent most people away on their holidays in a cheerier mood than last year. The recent weather has certainly helped. But gloomy clouds may hover over the exclusive settings of Tuscan villas and beach houses in Martha’s Vineyard, where bien pensant commentators […]

Ignore Krugman: We’re not caught in another depression

Spotting and identifying new species is always exciting. And the last couple of years has seen the emergence of a new type of economic commentator, the recovery denier.  Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize-winning economist, wrote a piece at the end of last year in which he compared the current situation to that of the 1930s. On […]