Economy

One of the greatest skills of our political leaders is the ability to tell a blatant lie while keeping a straight face.  Like the one about how inflation – officially running at 9.1% last month – is being fuelled by workers’ pay increases.  That one has gathered pace this week …

History ended in 1991.  That, at least, was the myth put about by a certain triumphalist brand of neoliberal.  The West had won the cold war.  The communist beast had been slayed.  And the looming twenty-first century would be an American one.  From that point on, there would be just …

In 1998, the Brent crude price of a barrel of oil fell to 12.8 dollars – its lowest price since 1976.  By 2000, it had risen to its highest price – $28.4 – since 1984, beginning the period of oil price volatility which has persisted to this day.  After briefly …

Those who argue that the entire world is being manipulated by a secret satanist elite cabal (I believe the truth is far worse) may see some significance in the order of events which have dramatically accelerated the collapse of western civilisation.  Covid-19 (pestilence) followed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine …

As the surplus energy available to the economy declines, so the number of things that we can do in theory but can no longer do in practice will grow.  This is the inverse of the technological efficiencies won in the course of three centuries of industrialisation – the peak of …

The remarkable feature of the unfolding stagflationary crisis is the speed with which it is happening.  Just six months ago, our political class was congratulating itself for successfully steering us through the pandemic.  Rises in gas and oil prices were merely a transitory re-adjustment of supply and demand as economies …

Are we in a recession?  It is an interesting question because nobody can know for sure.  A recession is defined as two successive quarters of negative growth.  Okay, but how do we know if, in the quarter we are in, the economy is shrinking?  Again, we cannot know this.  This …

The UK may have avoided a technical recession – two successive quarters of negative growth – in the first half of 2022, but a year from now this will be of little comfort.  This is because – despite the protestations of the US Bidon administration – the downturn in economic …

Readers will be familiar with “the butterfly effect” – mathematician Edward Lorenz’s description of how, within a complex system, a tiny input, like a butterfly flapping its wing, may cause dramatic changes, such as the location, intensity, and path of a storm weeks later.  Economist Steve Keen used similar modelling …

Britain’s metropolitan liberal class is getting exercised about airport delays ahead of the Easter break.  Pent up demand after two years of lockdown and, one suspects, many people having one last holiday in the sun, have run headlong into labour shortages.  And while one can have sympathy with passengers having …