It now seems certain that the Scottish people will have the opportunity of voting on an independence referendum, at latest in 2014 and probably sooner, with David Cameron’s government and Scottish first minister (and Scottish National Party leader) Alex Salmond disagreeing mostly on the referendum’s timing. It’s thus worth looking at the prospects for an […]

The Iowa caucuses appear to have done their usual job – dooming the Republican ticket in next November’s election. So I thought it worth looking at what another four years of President Obama might bring, and how deep might be the hole the U.S. will have to dig out of in 2017. “Be assured, my […]

According to the Mayan calendar, the Great Cycle will end on December 21, 2012, at which point the current Fourth World founded on August 11, 3114 BC will come to an end, leading us into a Fifth World of greater enlightenment. Economically, this is beginning to seem like a remarkably accurate prediction. There are a […]

The death of Kim Jong-il, dictator of North Korea since 1994, has been met with near universal condemnation both of his human rights record and his approach to economics. Yet juche, the philosophy of self-reliance underpinning the North Korean economy since his father Kim Il-sung devised it, is far from dead. Instead, as hapless populist […]

The 1957 Treaty of Rome bound the members of the EU’s forerunner to an “ever closer” union. Last week’s political developments and the previous disturbances in the market for Eurozone government bonds suggest that this aim may be a mirage, ever receding and never to be attained. Apart from considering Britain’s own position, it’s worth […]

Two successive articles in the Financial Times last week gave warning of a new problem approaching: they spoke of expected 25% declines in financing volume for both commodities finance and aircraft purchases. In addition, the tottering euro-zone provides another route by which a credit crunch may be unleashed on the world. In today’s distorted world […]

Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong each killed tens of millions of people, and John Maynard Keynes was a pacifist who never fired a shot in anger. However economically, when the billions come to be totted up, it may well be the case that Keynes was the most destructive of the four. He cannot […]

If time travelers from 1912, well-read in Edwardian science fiction, arrived in the early part of next year, they would find our era unexpectedly familiar in a number of ways. Since by 1912 automobiles and aviation were already in existence (my house has a perfectly serviceable 1911 garage) our lifestyle would show far less change […]

The eurozone crisis, which could have been defused initially by allowing Greece to depart the euro, has now taken on a much more serious aspect. If as seems possible Italy, Spain and even France lose the confidence of the international debt markets and are forced to write down debt, then government debt of prime countries […]

There has been considerable discussion as to whether the potential Greek default makes it this cycle’s Lehman Brothers, but that is surely wrong. Greece is much too small to destroy large areas of the world economy, as did the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. It is also being bailed out on exceptionally favorable, not to say […]