You may be interested in an article of mine at the Cobden Centre website. Received wisdom is that governments should try to ameliorate the impact of the economic crisis by setting interest rates artificially low and penalising prudence. The…

According to Angela Knight, Chief Executive of the British Bankers' Association: "A bank is like any other business - if its fixed operating costs go up then so does the price of its product." Angela has provided a nice illustration of how…

Imagine you are a politician, elevated after the recent election from shadow to head of a department. You have quite a bit of experience shadowing your department, but to be fair, you haven't had access to all the information and resources…

The economic debate is coalescing increasingly into two camps: those who think that the Government can prevent a further economic correction through deep spending cuts, and those who think that the Government can prevent a further…

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors... and miss. (-Robert Heinlein-) When there's a single thief, it's robbery. When there are a thousand thieves, it's taxation. (-Vanya Cohen-) HMRC, King Gord's tax collectors…

Eric Pickles has announced that he will abandon plans to charge people for their use of waste collection services (the "bin tax"). He will use the "carrot" of rewarding people with vouchers for the volume of recyclable material they produce…

Attended an enjoyable IPN book launch this evening, for Matt Ridley's -The Rational Optimist-. It sounds well-worth reading, to keep our current troubles in perspective. Met a couple of interesting guys whose sites I wanted to point you at…

The following is one key point of the Queen's Speech proposals, from the front of today's Telegraph: Academy schools introduced in England and Wales under plans to free outstanding primaries and secondaries from local authority control. So…

If the faint-heartedness of the cuts announced today* doesn't demonstrate the difficulties that the new British government will have when it comes to more difficult decisions, and that businesses and individuals will have in investing in…

The energy companies? Our central bankers and Treasury representatives? Or both groups? In America, prices fell in April, led by reductions in the cost of fuel and other energy. From The New York Times: -"Consumer prices over all fell in…

Sometimes you find an error in a book so early and brazen that you barely feel the need to read further, and if you do, everything after that is diminished by the awareness of the author's bias or irrationality. A classic example is Marx's…

On -Question Time- tonight, there was yet more discontent with the politicians* claiming that "the people had voted for a hung parliament". It is becoming a well-trodden but sterile debate for most non-politicians to point out that none of…