The Martin Hutchinson Place
In the summer of 1914, all the world’s major economies were quite well run by governments that understood the benefits of industrialization and free markets. There were also no major ideological conflicts — the two most ideologically extreme countries, the socialist democracy of France and the still quasi-feudal autocracy of Russia were locked in a […]
Paul Ehrlich, the biologist and environmentalist who died last week, in 1968 wrote “The Population Bomb” forecasting mass starvation by the 1980s if global population, then 3.4 billion, was not brought under control. He has since been much mocked by anti-environmentalists, who point out correctly that global population has since soared to 8.3 billion, yet […]
The global economic distortions caused by China’s state-driven economic model are becoming more severe. China’s investment has been raised to economically unprecedented levels and the country has embarked on a manic subsidized export drive to keep its GDP growth rate around 5%. That policy is reaching its limits, both through uncollectible debt in the economy […]
President Trump’s military campaign against Iran raises a most urgent question: what kind of successor regime is possible, and how will that regime attain legitimacy? Only with a legitimate, economically rational regime can Iran prosper, yet the triple temptations of Islamism, authoritarian socialism and hopeless government corruption may well seduce an inexperienced electorate into error, […]
Around a third of U.S. equities are now owned by index funds or by institutions mimicking index funds and the percentage so owned is steadily rising – passively owned institutional equities recently overtook those actively managed. This is a negation of capitalism; if investors are not making rational decisions about their investments, the market’s sorting […]
Sanae Takaichi’s thumping recent victory in Japan’s elections gives hope that Japan’s economy may finally be recovering. There is much recovery to do; at IMF estimates for 2026, Japan’s GDP per capita (at purchasing power parity) is $56,444, below even badly-run Britain’s at $65,215 and far below the United States at $92,883, let alone its […]
They laughed when he demonstrated his new communication device. A distinguished academic who had discovered the medium he was using had said there were no practical applications. Another distinguished British academic had failed to make such an apparatus practicable, despite prolonged efforts. As a young unknown foreigner, with no formal education beyond high school, how […]
This column went on record before President George W. Bush’s selection of Ben Bernanke as Fed Chairman and said that of all the likely candidates, he would be the worst. In the next decade, that judgement was miserably justified. Now President Trump has avoided the funny-money favorite Rick Rieder of BlackRock and instead appointed Kevin […]
The former cabinet ministers Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick’s defections to the Reform party suggest that the disastrous “Conservative” governments of 2010-24 may indeed finally be extinguishing that long-lived and very occasionally illustrious party. Yet Reform’s Nigel Farage has shown himself prone to the faults of the 2010-24 “Conservatives” in barring original thinkers such as […]
President Trump wants the United States to buy Greenland, and European recalcitrance against the idea led him to impose further tariffs on the EU to spur negotiations. Trump’s negotiating techniques may be rough, but the geopolitical advantages of a U.S. takeover of Greenland are clear, and EU hatred of Trump should not be allowed to […]