Scotland, it seems, is going to change whether her people vote for independence on September 18. That’s the conclusion of Financial Times analyst Merryn Somerset Webb. Her article on August 2 summarises the plans and proposals for changing property rights in land which are now in the pipeline. But the headline is misleading: “The twilight […]
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How the West Garrotes itself
The politically convenient myth is that western wages are undermined by cheap eastern labour. It’s a notion that governments foster, to avoid the reality: their policies are garrotting their economies. True, Asian goods flooded the markets in Europe and North America over the past 30 years. That helped to maintain the buying power of wages […]
Return of the sub-prime
A measure of the ignorance of economists, and the politicians who rely on them, is the current frenzy over house prices in Britain. Is the economy locked into a housing bubble that will burst? That’s the question occupying the pundits, who fail to locate current events in their historical context. True, the sub-prime mortgage has […]
Palace of Fools: who’s laughing?
By acting as fools, jesters in mediaeval courts deployed the power of laughter to get away with uttering uncomfortable truths in the presence of kings. Today, Britain’s Palace of Westminster is full of fools: but no-one is laughing. Take the case of the alarming rise in house prices, which is causing panic in David Cameron’s […]
Ukraine & the Geopolitics of Rent-seeking
The Ukraine crisis is just the first of what will become a series of territorial interventions by Russia. Understanding why NATO’s members failed to anticipate Russia’s intervention enables us to visualise one stream in the coming global military conflicts. There is an economic logic to President Putin’s strategy. This is exposed by examining the trading […]
How The Economist screws with our minds
Fantasy economics is driving our world to destruction. Confirmation of why this is so comes from The Economist, the London business magazine that claims to make sense of global markets. Its critique of “crony capitalism” relies on crass stupidities that pass for economic theory. Trouble is, politicians believe this nonsense. The Economist was founded in […]
Ireland: Breeding a Failed State
Ireland is a breeding factory. It exists to export cattle and people, to feed the culinary and commercial needs of other nations. To brand the Republic a failed state is to be courteous. The truth is ugly to behold, and painful to the sensibilities of decent people on that island. More Officially, religion was downgraded […]
’08: A case of Wilful Blindness
IT’S OFFICIAL. The experts who guided the global economy were flying blind. They failed to see the financial crisis coming because “The macroeconomic models available at the time of the crisis typically ignored the banking system”. The confession – a case of what lawyers call “wilful blindness” – appears on page 10 of the OECD’s […]
Ireland: Paradigm of a Weak State
The absence of a property tax helped to create the illusion of a “tiger” in Europe. Ireland was on a roll…until property prices collapsed and took down the nation’s banks. Now, the Government claims Ireland is on the path to recovery – having driven 87,100 people out of the country last year, the young desperately […]