Ireland is no Island
“A Budget tells us what we can’t afford, but it doesn’t keep us from buying it.” - William Feather. “In emerging economies, public debt of more than 40% of GDP is considered dangerous. That is less than half the ratio...
Economic Agent Orange
“I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.” - Thomas Jefferson. There are, crudely, three types of investment risk once one leaves the supposedly...
“No problem”
In the interests of brevity, readers may wish over the coming weeks and months to substitute Portugal, Spain and Italy for the word "Ireland" within this week's commentary. “..Brian Lenihan, Ireland’s finance minister, told Irish radio early on Wednesday the...
Viene la tormenta, part II
“The thought that you can create a prosperous economy by inflating is an illusion.” - Paul Volcker, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve. For our latest webcast, which features an economic overview by my colleague Killian Connolly and an...
Be afraid
“One disadvantage of asset purchases relative to conventional monetary policy is that we have much less experience in judging the economic effects of this policy instrument, which makes it challenging to determine the appropriate quantity and pace of purchases and...
The Trillion Pound Drop
“The Federal Reserve System is the central bank of the United States. It was founded by Congress in 1913 to provide the nation with a safer, more flexible and more stable monetary and financial system. Over the years, its role...
How to launch a hedge fund – or invest in one
“We took risks. We knew we took them. Things have come out against us. We have no cause for complaint.” - Robert Frost. “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.” These words are credited to former White House Chief...
Bubblicious
“I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering, jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.” - William Butler Yeats. For a pink paper, one...
Diamonds amidst rubble
“..the really big uncertainty is the political economy. Japan, in essence, has accepted a long period of private sector deleveraging and stagnant growth without much social upheaval. Whether voters in America or Europe will do the same, without either forcing...
Just buy Hazlitt
“There is no more persistent and influential faith in the world today than the faith in government spending. Everywhere government spending is presented as a panacea for all our economic ills.” - Henry Hazlitt, ‘Economics in one lesson’, published 1946....
Frankness goes to Hollywood
“People who avoid and evade paying their taxes will no longer get away with either.” - Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg at the Liberal Democrat Party Conference in Liverpool. “Tax avoidance: the legal utilization of the tax regime to one’s...
The golden ratio
“Greece rules out possibility of default” - FT headline, 16.9.2010. There’s probably merit in seeing the markets through fresh eyes. But after a couple of weeks away, not much seems to have really changed. Stocks have been more resilient than...
