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A third way on immigration
The Financial Times 25/04/08
There are some good economic as well as cultural arguments for immigration. One has only to look at the number of successful British businesses founded by immigrants or their children, or the impetus that immigrants have recently given to trades as diverse as nursing, catering and construction. But the cause of toleration is not helped by relying on bad economics, as the government so often does...more |
The case for a 'dual mandate'
The Financial Times 11/04/08
Both the Fed and Fed watchers still accept the idea of a "dual mandate" for both growth and price stability...[One] criticism of the dual mandate is that one instrument, namely nominal interest rates, cannot be used to determine two objectives - growth and price level behaviour...There is a way of combining the objectives which avoids this trouble, namely to target what economists call nominal demand, but which may be simply translated as internally generated cash spending. It is then left to economic agents to determine how far this is reflected in real growth and how far dissipated in inflation...more |
When inflation comes from abroad
The Financial Times 28/03/08
The discussion of world credit problems has concentrated too much on the trees and not enough on the wood. We hear a lot about which financial institutions should be bailed out by central banks and on what terms; which financial instruments are most to blame and whether they can be better regulated in the future. Of course these are important questions, however embarrassing they are to those who have preached nonintervention and competition. Yet in all this detail it is easy to lose the point of the exercise, which is perhaps too simple for the technocratic mind. It is to ensure a growth of nominal spending - that is spending in cash terms - rapid enough to support sustainable growth but not so rapid that it generates unacceptably high inflation. Whether this is brought about by conventional central bank interest rate policy, the reanimation of moribund credit and capital markets, tax cuts or sensible government spending is secondary...more |
 Against The Flow: Samuel Brittan's book
Atlantic Books - Now in paperback
"Samuel Brittan has been one of the Financial Times' leading columnists for nearly thirty years. He has also advised numerous Chancellors of the Exchequer on economic policy. Against the Flow collects the most important of his writings from the last three decades. Taken together the pieces in Against the Flow amount to a robust defence of classic liberalism"...more |
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