Tag: Economy

I do not think children should be taught that greed is the most powerful human motivation. The people who are most successful in business in the long run are people who are passionate about business, not money.

Some economists believe there is a deep underlying structure from which laws of economic behaviour that are universal in time and space can be deduced. I think that search is a wild goose chase.

Commercial and economic success, even in technological industries, depends not on the quality of technology, but on the match between technology and the needs of its customers.

The primary purpose of government investment in financial institutions is not to ensure that the taxpayer gets its money back – although that issue should certainly not be neglected – but to ensure that ordinary banking functions operate well.

The blunt truth is that free markets are not a particularly efficient system for allocating resources. They are just – like democracy – more efficient than other systems and – unlike democracy – more innovative than other systems.

John explains why capital is the stuff you have to protect yourself and why banks can never have enough of it.

The twentieth century would give small states the opportunity to achieve prosperity on the basis of narrow specialisation in a global economy. Such states would also benefit from the greater capacity of homogenous communities to reconcile economic dynamism with social cohesion. As a result, some of the small states of Western Europe would, in the course of the twentieth century, move from being among the poorest countries in the world to be among the richest.

There are only a few basic kinds of deception and self-deception in finance. John illustrates some of the key mechanisms.

Mr Paulson has taken the bad bank for US taxpayers and left shareholders with the good bank. Mr Darling should do the opposite

Why do we use no more materials today than a century ago? Modern economic growth is about better rather than more