Speech to the Rethinking Economics Conference, Oslo
On Friday, 13th April, 2018 I addressed the Rethinking Economics Conference…This is the You Tube link to the event…
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On tectonic plates, the economic system and the economics profession
It is my view that the greatest weakness of economics is the habit of drawing, or encouraging politicians to draw, macroeconomic conclusions from microeconomic reasoning (“the government budget, like a household budget, must balance”). This weakness is endemic within the profession. It is caused by the deliberate neglect of macroeconomics, including shameful neglect of Keynes’s …
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Why the Bank of England should not raise the Bank Rate
I wrote this post on the 21st April, 2018, for PRIME. “There are a significant number of households that are in so deep that the slightest sign of rough weather could see them in over their heads,” said Jonathan Davidson, one of the FCA’s directors of supervision. Given these imbalances, the biggest danger facing the …
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Interview with New Zealand’s biggest business website
On the 15th April, this year, I visited New Zealand at the invitation of the Institute of Directors, to address 600 CEOs at their annual meeting. This is an interview given to the journalist Rob Stock in which he asked about the possibility of another financial crisis.
Interview with Wallace Chapman of New Zealand Radio
At the invitation of New Zealand’s Institute of Directors, I recently visited Auckland. I was there to address the IoD’s annual gathering of 600 CEOs..and on the side did this interview with NZ’s equivalent of the BBC, for a Sunday Talk Show with popular host, Wallace Chapman. It was good to be given fully 20 …
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From Prospect Magazine: there can never be a market in money
Prospect magazine’s April 14, 2018 edition ignited a debate between orthodox and heterodox economists. It also included a page titled: In my contribution I tried to explain the nature of money. Not sure I succeeded. Anyway, here it is: “Unlike the prices of bitcoins or gold, the price of money is not determined by …
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George Osborne, Hubris and Nemesis
This piece appeared in the London Observer on Sunday, 4th March, 2018 By asserting the policy of “monetary radicalism and fiscal conservatism”, Osborne and his colleagues ensured that those responsible for the crisis benefited from the Bank of England’s quantitative easing programme, which inflated asset prices largely owned by the more affluent. Simultaneously, the Conservative …
Why the Left must lead Britain away from Brexit
This was published on the PRIME site on the 25th February, 2018. Britain is led today by deeply divided political parties. Our leaders have many policies, but no inspiring vision for Britain’s future – either within, or outside the EU. As President Roosevelt once famously said: “where there is no vision, the people perish”. …
Do tax revenues finance government spending?
The Economist had a piece on Britain’s tax base in its 25th January edition. It begins with a reference to Denis Healey’s speech to the 1973 Labour conference, in which he promised that tax increases would be met with “howls of anguish” from everyone, not just the rich. As it happens, I have been reviewing the …
Will workers get a pay rise in 2018?
The Financial Times questioned economists for its annual publication of economic forecasts: “With unemployment at a 40-year low, how much of a pay rise will British workers get in 2018?” (See here: https://www.ft.com/content/98ce5e72-ebd9-11e7-bd17-521324c81e23) PRIME economists responded thus: The fall in real wages while employment has fallen and employment has risen is a consequence of sustained hyper-globalisation …