ECONOMIC HISTORY

Against the Current

Robert Skidelsky

Are markets moral? What does the East expect from the West? Has globalization killed the idea of equality? Has the concept of “humanitarian intervention” been discredited? Is authoritarian capitalism a viable development option?

RECENT COMMENTARIES

FEATURED COMMENTARIES

Does Debt Matter?

Robert Skidelsky Series: Against the Current

2012-01-20

As with “the specter of Communism” that haunted Europe in Karl Marx’s famous manifesto, so today “[a]ll the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise” the specter of national debt. But statesmen who tremble before their national debt should remember that Marx’s specter, too, was a “nursery tale.”... read

Comments: 14 Recommended: 1 Read: 21454

The Euro in a Shrinking Zone

Robert Skidelsky Series: Against the Current

2011-12-15

The euro will survive, but the zone will shrink, sending shock waves around the world. But sometimes shock waves are needed to break the ice and start the water flowing again.... read

Comments: 7 Recommended: 1 Read: 25795

The Wages of Economic Ignorance

Robert Skidelsky Series: Against the Current

2011-11-21

Politicians portray everything good that happens as the result of their exceptional talents and efforts, while everything bad is caused by someone or something else. But, when i comes to most advanced countries' inability to achieve a sustained recovery since 2008, they have only their own economic illiteracy to blame.... read

Comments: 13 Recommended: 1 Read: 23304

Recovery before Reform

Robert Skidelsky Series: Against the Current

2011-10-20

Whatever their intrinsic merits, none of the proposals for bank reform being debated nowadays addresses the global economy’s most immediate problem: undersupply, not oversupply, of credit. In other words, the challenge is to revive lending growth in full awareness that we must begin devising ways to rein it in.... read

Comments: 2 Recommended: 0 Read: 13863

The Consequences of Angela Merkel

Robert Skidelsky Series: Against the Current

2011-09-20

Germany has been leading the opposition in the EU to any write-down of troubled eurozone members’ sovereign debt. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel should consider that, following World War I, her country was in a similar position – and the result for Germany, Europe, and the world was hardly optimal.... read

Comments: 4 Recommended: 1 Read: 25253

The Keynes-Hayek Rematch

Robert Skidelsky Series: Against the Current

2011-08-19

The Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek, who died in 1992 at the age of 93, once remarked that returning to fashion requires only outliving your opponents. His great good fortune was to outlive Keynes for almost 50 years, and thus to claim a posthumous victory over a rival who had savaged him intellectually while he was alive.... read

Comments: 27 Recommended: 4 Read: 42668

The Battle of the Bonds

Robert Skidelsky Series: Against the Current

2011-07-20

Every week, the preposterous coterie of European bankers and finance ministers drags itself from one capital to another to discuss which default/restructuring plan to adopt. No one who is not well versed in financial legerdemain can make much sense of the various schemes, but behind them lie two moral attitudes, which are much easier to grasp.... read

Comments: 1 Recommended: 1 Read: 19919

Free Speech under Siege

Robert Skidelsky Series: Against the Current

2011-06-21

You know that a doctrine is in trouble when even those claiming to defend it do not understand what it means. By that standard, the classic doctrine of free speech is in crisis.... read

Comments: 2 Recommended: 2 Read: 16760

Lumpy Labor

Robert Skidelsky Series: Against the Current

2011-05-19

Work-sharing is surely the most civilized solution to the problem of technology-driven unemployment. And yet all schemes aimed at easing the burden of work and increasing the amount of leisure risk falling victim to our genius for conjuring up new disasters.... read

Comments: 5 Recommended: 2 Read: 21654

Democracy or Finance?	Robert Skidelsky
"Shorting" sovereign debt is how financial markets hold governments accountable. Ultimately, however, it is voters, not markets, that hold governments to account, and, when these two accounting standards diverge, the popular standard must prevail if democracy is to survive.... read

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The Battle of the Bonds

Robert Skidelsky Series: Against the Current

2011-07-20

Comments: 1 Recommended: 1 Read: 19919

The Irrepressible 1930’s

Robert Skidelsky Series: Against the Current

2010-11-22

The just concluded G-20 meeting in Seoul broke up without agreement on either currencies or trade. Despite global leaders’ vows to the contrary, it seems that the dreadful protectionist precedent of the 1930’s is about to be revived.... read

Comments: 4 Recommended: 3 Read: 34819

The Nation State Revisited

Ralf Dahrendorf Series: Against the Current

2006-04-14

It has become fashionable to claim that the nation state has lost its place. Globalization, it is said, means that nations can no longer control their own affairs. They must join with others, as in the European Union or ASEAN or Mercosur, and they must increasingly rely on global institutions like the United Nations, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization.... read

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Inequality and Discontent

Ralf Dahrendorf Series: Against the Current

2006-01-19

In the last two decades, the world as a whole has gotten richer, but, while some national economies have advanced sharply, others have fallen farther behind. The increase in aggregate wealth has not led to the abolition, or even reduction, of poverty.... read

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The Limits of Democracy

Ralf Dahrendorf Series: Against the Current

2006-02-09

The election of the militant and hitherto extra-parliamentary group Hamas in the Palestinian territories reminds us of what democracy cannot achieve. No one in a more established democratic state is surprised if one’s own side does not win. Democracy is about competing parties, and, unless they form a “grand coalition,” they cannot all win. But what if an election’s winners have no intention of abiding by the rules that are part and parcel of the democratic process?... read

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A New Anti-Semitism

Ralf Dahrendorf Series: Against the Current

2006-03-08

These are violent times. Some believe that we are experiencing a new kind of conflict: “culture wars,” such as those between Sunni and Shiite Muslims or tribal groups in Africa and Asia, or indeed Islamists and Westerners. However, the deeper reasons for some of these conflicts may well be more traditional.... read

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The Politics of Frustration

Ralf Dahrendorf Series: Against the Current

2005-10-14

Does extreme poverty breed violence and ultimately revolution? Many people believe that it does, and seek to explain phenomena ranging from guerrilla insurgencies to Islamist terrorism accordingly.... read

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The Keynes-Hayek Rematch

Robert Skidelsky Series: Against the Current

2011-08-19

Comments: 27 Recommended: 4 Read: 42668

Elections are Not Enough

Ralf Dahrendorf Series: Against the Current

2005-11-15

There can be no liberal order without political democracy, but today we are frequently reminded that political democracy alone does not guarantee a liberal order. Free and fair elections may lead to the ascendancy of a president of Iran who wants to “wipe Israel off the map of the Middle East.” Or to a president of Venezuela whose intolerance of the business class causes jubilation in the streets, but emigration by those whose initiative is crucial for the welfare of the people. Less damaging, yet problematic, is the election – as in Poland – of a minority government that ruthlessly pursues its members’ personal interests and breaks all promises of cooperation made before the polls.... read

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Germany’s Five Election Unknowns	Ralf Dahrendorf
On September 18, Germany will hold an election that contains at least five unknowns. If it were an equation, it would be impossible to solve. Fortunately, politics is not mathematics – though, unfortunately, this means that there are no clear solutions. Indeed, even in the opaque terms of contemporary politics, the German case is particularly vexing.... read
From Karl Popper to Karl Rove – and Back	George Soros
The American public has proven remarkably susceptible to the manipulation of truth in recent years. The lesson is that without an explicit commitment to the pursuit of truth, the division of powers, free speech, and free elections cannot ensure that political discourse leads to a better understanding of reality.... read

AUTHOR INFO

Robert Skidelsky

Robert Skidelsky, a member of the British House of Lords, is Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University.

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