Category Global Financial Crisis
CORONAVIRUS | WEIGHING THE RISKS
This is an interim post in the mini-series of three that I’m publishing on coronavirus contingency planning. I felt compelled to publish this in-between post after an exchange on Facebook between a doctor-friend and me. In this post I’m questioning whether exhorting one’s family, friends and acquaintances to ‘stay safe’ is in fact inimical to […]
CORONAVIRUS CONTINGENCY PLANNING | WORST-CASE SCENARIO
This is another mini-series of three posts looking at contingency planning for the Covid-19 pandemic should the health, socio-economic and geopolitical situations deteriorate. This first post describes what could be a Covid-19 worst-case scenario. The second post will look at the positive side of the pandemic and how our quality of life could conceivably be […]
CORONAVIRUS | WHERE’S THIS HEADING (PART 3)?
A Long Read This post is the final one in a series of what’s turned out to be four parts (1, 2A, 2B and 3) contemplating the economic, political and social implications of the Covid-19 pandemic. The perspective I’m sharing here is held by people whom I refer to as ‘alt-economists’; I suppose I’m one […]
ON SOBER REFLECTION – A QUICKIE
I’m preparing an ‘upside’ post right now to balance all of the ‘downside’ stuff that I’ve published here on this blog over the past year or two. I recognise the need to shine some light on how we’re supposed to respond to what I argue is a steam train coming down the tracks towards us, […]
WHERE’VE YOU BEEN?
Apologies for the hiatus. I decided at the end of 2012 that during 2013 my own, main business activities (in the housing market) were not going to keep the wolf from the door. The housing market crash has meant that many businesses like mine have struggled since 2007/08; indeed, I’m aware of many businesses in […]
PUBLIC DEBT HEADING FOR STRATOSPHERE IF NHS NOT REFORMED
Today Jeremy Warner pointed out in the Daily Telegraph (link below) that unless the National Health Service is reformed, root and branch, then the UK’s national debt will hit 220% of GDP by 2062. It won’t get to that situation, of course, because as the economist Herbert Stein once said, “If something cannot go on forever, […]
ALMOST TIME TO LOOK TO THE POSITIVES
Introduction This post is the longest one I’ve written to date. You might wish to make yourself a cup of tea or coffee, or pour something stronger before reading on. Indeed, you might decide to wander off and find better things to do; if so, that’s fine by me. If you’re sticking around, though, you’ll […]
ENERGY AND THE DISMAL SCIENCE
The man on the Clapham omnibus is unlikely to have heard of Tullett Prebon. Tullett Prebon is an inter-dealer broker in the wholesale financial markets; Tullett Prebon acts as a link between firms to enable them to trade with each other anonymously; its brokers are the fast-talking middlemen who match buyers and sellers of complex […]
SOMETHING STRANGE IS HAPPENING – PART I
Essay # 1 It’s the second decade of the 21st century and something strange is happening to our society; strange and potentially threatening. Incidentally, don’t get hung up on that word “threatening”; we’ll end this essay on a comforting note. If I’m right to declare this then I want you, my children, to have some […]
OH FOR A BERLIN WALL MOMENT
Anybody else notice the transition these days from a group of bankers, bureaucrats and politicians grappling (and largely failing) with an intractable economic crisis, to something more sinister? We’re reading now that despite the virtual inevitability of a disorderly financial collapse of the euro currency, and quite possibly an existential threat to the European Union […]
Moraymint Chatter 