A tale from the desert
Before the Khadi of an Eastern city there came from the desert two torn and bruised travellers.
A giant step for mankind
A giant step for mankind – every crater for sale
(with thanks to Per Møller-Andersen)
Alistair Darling’s debt-defying stunt
As the Royal Bank of Scotland unloads £325bn of dodgy assets on the Treasury, Sunday Daily Telegraph financial journalist Philip Aldrick examines the potentially calamitous asset protection scheme here. We hope events will prove us wrong, but we share the doomsters’ worst predictions.
Backing a dead-cert loser
A bookmaker would not accept a bet that the Houses of Parliament lie to the west of the Greenwich meridian, because it is a fact that they do, with no element of a chance that they do not. By the same token, insurance companies do not issue policies involving paying out against what is inevitable, but only against the prospect of a risk that some specified event might occur. Thus it is undisputed...
UK needs to spend £90bn on 750,000 new jobs
The UK should spend £90bn on 750,000 new “shovel-ready” jobs to stop the unemployment rate rising to 10pc, according to Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) member David Blanchflower. Professor Blanchflower, the only member of the MPC to vote consistently for interest rate cuts, suggested that drastic fiscal stimulus measures were needed to prevent job losses creeping up to...
What are public goods?
What are public goods? They are goods that cannot be wholly provided by the market. An example is this ferry, which goes summer and winter, day and night, regardless of whether anyone turns up to travel on it.
Assuming people had to pay at the point of use, how could this be charged for? By dividing the cost amongst the number of users? By having different charges at different times? By having...
Ticket touts – a lesson in economics
The other day I was approached by a ticket tout standing in the freezing cold – it was minus ten – as I was walking past a sports event venue. Unusually, the tout was trying to buy tickets rather than sell, but either way the subject raises a lot of emotion and the touts are regarded as a despicable breed. Ticket touting was in the news again today in connection with a forthcoming series...
What is the Tax Justice Network for?
What is the Tax Justice Network for? The TJN describes itself as,
Not in my back yard
Increasing the supply of housing
by Henry LawLand value taxation as advocated by the Campaign is only one of many possible ways of collecting land value. Many alternative proposals are put forward, such as development auctions, an idea which has been devised by Tim Leunig of the London School of Economics, who has written a pamphlet called “In my back yard – a proposal for development...
UK national debt set to surpass £2 trillion
The national debt is likely to be exceed £2 trillion following the Treasury’s decision to stand behind Britain’s troubled banks’ debts. The latest Government figures emphasise fears about the impact of the crisis on the taxpayer and may spark further anxieties over Britain’s creditworthiness.