Today when I should have been enjoying the non-monetary benefits of Wimbledon Common I was instead getting depressed by The Economist, which I listen to as I walk. It isn’t difficult to be depressed: the world is full of shitty news. But the particular theme that got me this week was the way Europe had regulatedContinue reading “Maybe Europe is winning after all?”
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Growth – some less edited thoughts
After too long a gestation today I finally put out my report for the Institute for Government about what is needed to raise growth rates. Finally. I am rather an old dog in this fight. My goodness, it is five years since I wrote that growth cannot just be “unleashed”, a ridiculously obvious point thatContinue reading “Growth – some less edited thoughts”
so now we’re pretending we don’t know what causes inflation??
The mark of a stupid person is not their inability to understand things. It is their thinking they understand something that much smarter people do not. Which means I myself must be extremely stupid, because I think I understand, roughly, what causes inflation and yet Lord Mervyn King implies he does not, or at leastContinue reading “so now we’re pretending we don’t know what causes inflation??”
what, the fiscal rules, again?
The conventional wisdom, at least of the sort of crowd I hang out with, is that there is nothing wrong with the fiscal rules, nor with the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that measures policy against them. You can’t blame them for the state we’re in: not low growth, nor strained public services, and notContinue reading “what, the fiscal rules, again?”
Is this really a BOE “whatever it takes” moment?
There is a striking column in the FT from Adam Tooze, the incredibly prolific Chartbook author , which as I see it boils down to this: prolonged stagnation has thrown the UK into a desperate position; the 2022 Truss FacePlant has magnified an already strong tendency to overreact to the bond market; past such overreactionsContinue reading “Is this really a BOE “whatever it takes” moment?”
There really is no getting out of this fiscal corner
It is something of a cliche to argue that Britain is running out of money, living beyond its means, wandering through a fiscal fool’s paradise – but no less true for that. The trend of old-age payments will make it even worse (read The Economist). It was the great unspoken theme of the last electionContinue reading “There really is no getting out of this fiscal corner”
You have no idea if the Spending Review boosted growth
Imagine that, having committed some unspeakable acts in a former life, you were asked in this one to deliver a verdict on whether the Spending Review was good or bad for UK Growth. What would be your answer? The most honest one would be shrug, followed by a rant about the slipperiness of Treasury communications.Continue reading “You have no idea if the Spending Review boosted growth”
The hunt for the £45bn
A month ago I whiled away a lunch break asking BlueSky for the origin of a massive number. The figure £45bn had acquired a kind of solidity-by-repetition in what we pretentious types call “the political discourse”. £45bn was meant to be how much the government might save if it were to replace “manual, paper-based andContinue reading “The hunt for the £45bn”
Against vibes-based economic prognosticating
Here is how it goes. Let’s say it starts with the Government doing something bad, like raise a tax by £20bn, to fund a bunch of stuff. People don’t like tax, according to science, and so those affected complain. There are plenty of ways that they might complain: to the journalists ringing around asking forContinue reading “Against vibes-based economic prognosticating”
The Government needs its growth *explanation*
In Downing Street, I was once lobbied to support a £200m per annum cut to beer duty, because it was “the best growth policy I could ask for”. You see, that £200m would go into drinkers’ pockets, generate some 50m more pints, and with each barman serving 50 pints a day, call it 10,000 aContinue reading “The Government needs its growth *explanation*”
Freethinking Economist