What I am reading
Hillbilly Elegy, by J D Vance (2016)
The search for insight into the rise of Donald Trump has p...
Essays on modern monetary policy pt. 3: The folly of negative rates
Business history, of a sort, was made last week by the French pharmaceutical company, Sanofi, its blood thinner Plavix familiar ...
Book Review Mass Flourishing by Edmund Phelps
This book is really two books. The first - which I found original and fascinating - is on the nega...
The changing – and unchanging? – nature of the company town
In my recent essay on manufacturing fetishism, I described how the decline of manufacturing industry had been associated with the dec...
Manufacturing Fetishism
Donald Trump will bring millions of manufacturing jobs to the US, and make Ohio – a key swing stat...
Pension Funding
Yet another way we are cheating our grandchildren.
Long term real interest rates are negative i...
Swiss referendum
On Sunday, Switzerland will hold a referendum on a proposal to reform the country’s social welfare system by introducing a ‘basic incom...
The dangers of confusing democracy with populism
Like everyone else in Britain, I received last week a communication from the Electoral Commission about the coming EU referendum. ...
Helicopter money: A disguise for debt financing funded by short-term borrowing
The term “helicopter money” is derived from a vivid image created by the US economist Milton Friedman in which a central banker showers...
Political instability stems from the diminished importance of the left-right spectrum
Gordon Brown’s exchange with Gillian Duffy on the streets of Rochdale was a defining moment in the UK’s 2010 general election. It also ...