Economics

To the dentist. And for an extraction. I hadn’t had a tooth out in decades. But the twinges when I bit on a nut warned me that my problem molar — much abused by a badly fitted bridge in the 1970s — had finally given way. My usual dentist confirmed as much with a poke and an X-ray. Then came the surprise. ‘I’m going to hand you over now,’ he said. Having a tooth out has ceased to be a hazard of life to be borne and grinned at. Instead it’s become dental surgery. And it requires a specialist. Mine was a man with a mission. ‘My job is to

Campaigning in Putney in 1978, Mrs Thatcher famously took out a pair of scissors and cut a pound note down the middle, telling her audience that the remaining stump represented what was left of the pound in your pocket after four years of Labour and high inflation. David Cameron may soon be able to repeat the stunt — except rather than cutting a note in half he will be able to stick a bit on the end to represent the extra buying power being granted to consumers courtesy of deflation. Inflation on the government’s preferred measure, the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), has fallen to 0.5 per cent. With the price

‘What is a Minsky moment, anyway?’ asks Gerry Stembridge, an Irish satirist. ‘I’ve been reading about them in the papers and have often wondered’. Stembridge is putting the question to Paul McCulley, chief economist at Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund with over $200 billion under management, one of the ten most influential economists on earth. McCulley is sporting a T-shirt and jeans. The two men, Celtic comic and American financial whiz, are on stage in a theatre in Kilkenny, a bijou provincial city in south-east Ireland. It’s Saturday night and they’re facing a sell-out crowd — all of whom have paid to watch a debate on global economics and

Spectator Money is out, with ideas on how to make it, spend it and even how to be seen spending it. Freddy Gray looks at the ‘social economy’ – think tax loopholes for financiers of politically favoured endeavours; while Camilla Swift peruses credit cards such as Kanye West’s ‘African American Express’ and the Dubai First Royale, ‘studded with diamonds. Bring it on, Sheikh Sugardaddy.’ Spare a thought, though, for the inconspicuous consumers – or at least, the wannabes. This segment took a hit last week in a joint operation dubbed ‘Onymous’, in which the FBI, Europol and friends arrested 17 alleged web-administrators and vendors and shuttered dozens of sites peddling child pornography, weapons, fake Danish passports, hacking services and so on. ‘Cash, drugs, gold and silver

There was much glee about yesterday’s publication of a report into the economic impact of immigration, which concluded eastern Europeans had provided a net benefit of £4.4 billion to the UK economy. There was far less mention of the fact that immigrants from outside Europe in the same period cost the taxpayers £118 billion. But as Christopher Caldwell observed in Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, the immigration debate is not about economics, for ‘the social, spiritual, and political effects of immigration are huge and enduring, while the economic effects are puny and transitory. If, like certain Europeans, you are infuriated by polyglot markets and street signs written in Polish,

The UK Land Registry today released its latest report on house prises, showing the ticket-cost of an average home in England and Wales down 2.2 per cent to £177,299 in September from a peak of £181,324 in November 2007. No, that still doesn’t mean that underpaid Westminster interns can afford to buy a home in central London. Per the Land Registry, average house prices in the capital rose 18.4 per cent since this time last year. Cue the New York Times with an opinion article composed by a young writer, cavilling about the matter: ‘Without capital, those of us who do not own property resign ourselves to running in an

Gandhi would test his resolve by sleeping between two naked virgins, an avenue not really open to me, as my wife is an Anglican vicar: though Anglicanism imposes almost no constraints on your behaviour or beliefs nowadays, it still frowns on sleeping with naked virgins, especially if they are of the opposite sex. So my equivalent of this exercise is to try to go into certain shops for half an hour and emerge without buying anything. Lakeland is an especially tough challenge here, but the real Matterhorn for me is an airport branch of Dixons. Last time I tried this, I found myself having to resist buying one of the