Thinking Out Aloud

A favourite economic justification for state action is to deal with externalities --the effects on people of some action or transaction tha...

Is the title of a post by Paul Krugman  ( via ) I (almost) completely agree with. My favourite line: The bitter irony here is that Europe...

What makes the decent Left decent is not that it is Left, but what it shares with decent folk who are not of the Left. Failure to grasp tha...

The Left likes to view itself as the champions of equality, compassion, tolerance and support for the oppressed. As with many people, my mo...

Reading  Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit   by Charles Calomiris and Stephen Haber continues to...

Protestant monarchies have a much better survival rate than Catholic monarchies. The ultimate willingness of the British monarchy to supp...

Bagehot’s Dictum  (aka Bagehot's Rule)—that [in a financial crisis] the central bank provide money at higher interest rates to illiquid...

Have been reading Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit by Charles Calomiris and Stephen Haber. It ...

This is based on comments I made here . The World Bank reports that, on a purchasing power parity  (PPP) basis, China's economy is s...

What do the following things have in common? Shells (especially cowries), beads (whether made of stone, shell, glass or whatever), salt (...