Economic History

MOST RECENT COMMENTARY

Robert Skidelsky

The distinction between capital and current spending (or between “good” and “bad” deficits) is old hat to any student of public finance. Nevertheless, we forget knowledge at such an alarming rate nowadays that it is worth re-stating, particularly with deficit hawks in power in the UK and throughout Europe.

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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: 22762

Schadenfreude Capitalism

Harold James Series: Capitalism Then and Now

2012-01-04

The protracted financial and economic crisis discredited first the American model of capitalism, then the European version, and now could undermine the Asian approach, too. Coming after the failure of state socialism, does this mean that there is no correct way of organizing an economy?... read

Comments: 7 Recommended: 0 Read: 26174

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: 27490

The British “Non”

Harold James Series: Capitalism Then and Now

2011-12-11

At the just-concluded EU summit, British Prime Minister David Cameron vented decades of accumulated resentment stemming from his country’s relationship with Europe. It wasn't the first time a UK leader has adopted a stance of heroic resistance to Europe – only to be remembered as irrelevant and discredited.... read

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The Poetry of the Euro

Harold James Series: Capitalism Then and Now

2011-12-05

The euro was not just the outcome of an idiosyncratic quest to reduce the wear on pockets stuffed with odd national coins, or to facilitate intra-European trade. The bold European experiment reflected a new attitude about what money should do, as well as how it should be managed.... read

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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: 24123

Striking Euro Gold (and Silver)

Harold James Series: Capitalism Then and Now

2011-11-01

The alternatives for Europe’s currency, the euro, seem increasingly limited to a desperate muddling through or a chaotic collapse. But there is a bolder and more productive approach that relies on past experience with multiple currencies.... read

Comments: 6 Recommended: 1 Read: 14491

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

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Bleed the Foreigner

Harold James Series: Capitalism Then and Now

2011-10-04

The economists’ commonplace that a monetary union demands a fiscal union is only part of a much deeper truth about debt and obligation. Debt is rarely sustainable if there is not some sense of communal or collective responsibility.... read

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Bleed the Foreigner

Harold James Series: Capitalism Then and Now

2011-10-04

Comments: 10 Recommended: 1 Read: 17594

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: 20519

Debt and Democracy

Harold James Series: Capitalism Then and Now

2011-01-05

The EU’s sovereign-debt crisis constitutes a fundamental threat not only to the euro, but also to democracy and public accountability. Indeed, the principle of not reneging on public debt is is deeply intertwined with the development of legal security, representative government, and modern democracy.... read

Comments: 1 Recommended: 1 Read: 19681

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: 35386

The Great Depression Analogy

Harold James Series: Capitalism Then and Now

2009-05-04

Whenever today’s economic crisis is discussed, analogies to the Great Depression are never far away, with the year 1929 almost always taken as a reference point. But two completely different pathologies were manifest in the Great Depression; each called for different diagnoses – and different cures.... read

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Banks, States, and Financial Crises

Harold James Series: Capitalism Then and Now

2009-02-04

There is a danger that in the push to nationalize banks as a consequence of the current financial crisis, governments will see it as their duty to implement strategies. Indeed, the strategic vision of a bank shaping a country's economic fortunes is as flawed as was the idea of central economic planning. ... 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

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: 44111

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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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
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

FEATURED COMMENTARY

The Poetry of the Euro
Harold James
Series: Capitalism Then and Now

Comments: 2
Recommended: 0
Read: 14585

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