Posts Tagged ‘growth

This is a blog post for Fundweb. Having written a whole book on the cultural aversion to prosperity it is intensely frustrating to watch the supposed great debate about economic growth. Of course it is easy for authors to over-estimate their influence. But here are what I regard as 10 of the key confusions in [...]

This is my latest column for Fund Strategy The way it is being presented there is a great economic battle brewing in the heart of Europe. A pro-growth camp led by François Hollande, the new socialist French president, is fighting back against the pro-austerity hawks led by Germany’s conservative Angela Merkel. This picture is misleading [...]

This is my latest Perspective column for Fund Strategy. There is an obvious riposte to last week’s Perspective column in which I attacked what I called “debt fetishism”. Although some political figures, most notably David Cameron, can be criticised for their debt obsession there are other influential voices who oppose this view. Barack Obama is [...]

Was inequality one of the main causes of the economic crisis? The contention is supported by influential voices such as Bill Gross of Pimco and Raghuram Rajan, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. The question has to be unpicked carefully. There are two blind alleys to avoid. The first is to focus [...]

My article on “consumer capitalism” for Fund Strategy magazine is on the  Real Clear Markets portal today.

This is my latest Perspective column for Fund Strategy. Perhaps the most pervasive, peculiar and damaging preconception about the economy is that this is an age of consumer capitalism. From this perspective it is consumption, mainly by individual consumers, that drives economic activity. Although it is acknowledged that production played an important role in the [...]

This is my latest Perspective column for Fund Strategy. Do you feel squeezed? If so how painful are you finding it? And is it likely to get better or worse in the foreseeable future? It is not surprising that the compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary recently named “squeezed middle” the word of the year [...]

Rather than make a general comment on yesterday’s public sector strike in Britain I just want to draw attention to one aspect of the debate. It is hard to think of a better example of how the demand for equality, historically associated with the left, can take on a conservative character. When the premise of [...]

I have an article in the Guardian’s “big ideas” series on EF Schumacher’s notion of “small is beautiful”.

My article on “creative destruction” for Fund Strategy magazine is on the  Real Clear Markets portal today.