Economics

Wednesday

Allister Heath

A predictable guru

There is only one politician who has emerged from the recession with his reputation enhanced. Yes, you’ve guessed right: I’m referring to Vince Cable, the ubiquitous grey-haired, sober-suited deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats. Even many Tories would feel reassured were Cable, who exudes reasonableness, to become Chancellor; broadcasters with little understanding of finance defer to him, with the BBC treating him as a cross between a living saint and a Nobel laureate in economics. A former chief economist at Shell, he is always at the other end of a mobile phone; journalists know they can count on better copy talking to him than anything on offer from the Tories.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Debating Larry Summers

Terrifying news. Terrifying that is for anyone reared in the free-wheeling yet genial and sensible world of British parliamentary style debate. It turns out that Larry Summers, erstwhile Saviour of the Universe, was a policy debater while he was an undergraduate. Noam Scheiber reveals all in his informative profile of Mr Summers: Personality aside, Summers has long been associated with a certain tactical and strategic brashness. “I’m somebody who wants their errors to be of trying to do too much rather than trying to do too little,” he told Portfolio magazine last September. One early outlet for this instinct was the college debate circuit, which Summers joined while an undergrad

Sunday

Alex Massie

Countercyclical Assets

One of my favourite features at Marginal Revolution is Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok’s occasional look at countercyclical assets – ie, products and economic sectors that are doing quite nicely at the moment. They include: Safes, Atlas Shrugged, the Mafia, Economic Disaster Tours, Tinned Soup, Matchmakers, Prayer, Second Life’s economy, Cobblers, Tasers and Alpacas. So there’s the future: Self-sufficient, heavily-armed Randian Alpaca farmers holding out against the Mafia with only the consolation of prayer and the escapism of online fantasies to sustain them as the “real” world collapses and man returns to a Mad Maxian, elemental state of being. Hold on tight folks, it’s going to be one hell of