Tim Worstall
1:52pm
There's clearly something wrong with me as there are certain mindsets that I simply cannot understand. Most I can see where they're coming from: racism for example is often simply a fear of those outside the group. Not liking broccoli seems entirely sensible to be honest. But in politics there are those who completely mystify me.
But this recognition needs to be tempered by the realisation that the increasingly centralised micromanagement of many of our public services has over the last 10 years produced a clunking, overstretched and top-down form of governance. In health, education, policing and transport,...
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8:59am
A great article by Martin Wolf in today's FT, analysing what the upwards-revised borrowing figures in the PBR mean for the public finances. Here are his key observations:
"First, the Treasury’s view that the last cycle ended in 2006 seems quite ridiculous. The correct view is that the UK has been caught in an unsustainable supercycle, with a once-in-a-lifetime bubble in global finance and domestic housing. It is only now in the downswing. The cyclically adjusted fiscal deficit, properly measured, was far larger than believed for at least a decade. So fiscal policy
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Tim Worstall
12:49pm
On that miracle of finding a turkey in the supermarket when you want one.
You probably didn't call your local supermarket ahead of time and order your Thanksgiving turkey this year, did you? Why not? Because you automatically assumed that a turkey would be there when you showed up, and it probably was there when you showed up "unannounced" at the grocery store to select your bird. And the reason your Thanksgiving turkey was waiting for you? Because of "spontaneous order," "self-interest," and the "invisible hand" of the free market - "the mysterious power that leads innumerable people, each...
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Tim Worstall
12:29pm
From an Englishman.....
Happy Thanksgiving to my colonial readers, at least you get to stuff and eat the turkeys, we just get to be ruled by them.
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12:13pm
Can someone please tell Angela Merkel that the world is behind Gordon Brown in a great consensus? Because the German Chancellor seems to have forgotten. After rejecting Brown’s casino approach to public finance (borrow like mad, and encourage the public to do the same, then hail yourself as an economic genius), Germany has two things Britain woefully lacks: a balanced budget and a trade surplus.
Germans have always been nervous about the debt-fuelled growth which Brown relied on. They recognise the danger in asset bubbles. The Bundesbank was always mindful of this,...
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