China’s population may have peaked in 2021. This is worrying, since population and labour force growth are key inputs in GDP growth. Monetary data also point to weaker trend growth going forward. In mid-January, there was an interesting news item from China. The number of children born in 2021 was…
El Salvador has voted to make Bitcoin legal tender. It is difficult to see any rationale for this. In fact, it is a ridiculous move, highlighting President Bukele’s ignorance of economics In early June, the Congress of El Salvador, acting on a proposal from President Nayib Bukele, passed a law…
Throughout the long and tortuous negotiation with Brussels over the terms of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, Mrs May has always known that she has had two very different tasks. The first of these has been to persuade the EU to agree to a form of words which she…
The European Commission apparently wants to lay its hands on the ECB’s profits. This is a bad and probably unworkable idea and is unlikely to happen. It does highlight the EU’s post-Brexit money problem. According to the Financial Times, the European Commission is considering appropriating the ECB’s profits in order…
In spite of recent victories, populism usually fails, mainly because of its inherent contradictions But this does not deal with the underlying causes of populism The liberal order can triumph, but not by attempting to ‘out-populist’ the populists or by treating voters as ignorant fools Previous articles in this series…
In our previous two articles in this series we have considered the phenomenon of populism, how it operates and what gives rise to it, and how the current state of the developed world has led to the current surge in populist parties and policies. In this article we look at…
In our article last week we looked at the rise of populism in recent years, and explored what populism is, what typically leads to a populist surge and what some of the consequences for and effects on democracy and the wider society are when politics takes on a populist hue.…
Populism has very old roots; and it comes and goes in waves In modern times, populist parties rarely win elections. Their ideas triumph anyway. The populist victories in 2016/17 make this a very unusual time Populism is not the ultimate expression of a democracy. On the contrary, it is a…
I wrote the following piece for my blog on 4th June 2007, well before the rise of ISIS and the Arab Spring. Some of the details are therefore dated and I have made some adjustment in bold where it was necessary. However, as another conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran looms,…
Corruption is a cancer on societies, both in terms of economic and of social cost. It is not enough to tackle the symptoms of corruption; the underlying causes must also be attacked. Both Saudi Arabia and China are doing the former but ignoring the latter. They will therefore fail. Last…
