Since I believe that the Scots are sensible, I think that they will vote “no” this week to independence. But, whichever way the vote goes, the spectacular rise of nationalism, in Scotland and elsewhere in Europe, is a symptom of a diseased political mainstream. Many are now convinced that the current way of organizing our […]
Germany And Europe’s Surplus Of Stagnation
While the rest of the world recovers from the Great Recession of 2008-2009, Europe is stagnating. Eurozone growth is expected to be 1.7% next year. What can be done about it? One solution is a weaker euro. Earlier this month, the chief executive of Airbus called for drastic action to reduce the value of the euro against the dollar […]
Secular Stagnation And The Road to Full Investment
A specter is haunting the treasuries and central banks of the West – the specter of secular stagnation. What if there is no sustainable recovery from the economic slump of 2008-2013? What if the sources of economic growth have dried up – not temporarily, but permanently? The new pessimism comes not from Marxists, who have […]
The Wolves Of Wall Street
“What a commentary on the state of twentieth-century capitalism,” mused “motivational speaker” Jordan Belfort as he looked back on his life of fraud, sex, and drugs. As head of the brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont, he fleeced investors of hundreds of millions of dollars in the early 1990’s. I saw Martin Scorsese’s film The Wolf of Wall […]
Death To Machines?
At the start of the Industrial Revolution, textile workers in the Midlands and the North of England, mainly weavers, staged a spontaneous revolt, smashing machinery and burning factories. Their complaint was that the newfangled machines were robbing them of their wages and jobs. The rebels took their name, and inspiration, from the apocryphal Ned Ludd, […]
Free Trade And Costly Love
The World Trade Organization’s ministerial conference in Bali in December produced a modest package of encouragements to global trade. More broadly, the WTO’s multilateral approach has shown its worth by preventing a massive increase in trade barriers, unlike in 1929-1930, when protectionism helped deepen and broaden the Great Depression. But the main question – whether globalization is […]