Torben Iversen, a Danish political science and professor and David Soskice, British economist and professor at the London School of Economics addresses does capitalism conflict with democracy with a resounding “no”, Not only capitalism work, it is also the only economic system that works and insists that democracy and the advanced market economy are symbiotic.…
It’s the first time three cities have shared the top spot in the 30-year history of annual economist intelligence unit survey which compares price in 133 cities globally. The French capital ranked second most expensive last year is one of the four European cities in the top 10. It compares the cost of living…
Economist Raghuram Rajan’s The Third Pillar, describes an ongoing struggle for balance between the three building blocks of a good society Market, State and Community. Rajan tells us what’s needed to shift our prospects in favour of technological progress that empowers and enriches the many, away from political anger and estrangement. Rajan was awarded the Director’s…
In Nine Crises, William Keegan examines a series of turning points , starting with the devaluation crisis of 1967 and ending with post Brexit turmoil fifty years later. This book explains how key participants viewed each crisis as it unfolded and what they hoped to achieve. The British economic policy and its policymakers have…
What measures will governments and people take in response to such tectonic economic and cultural shift and how to avoid the prospect of undermining the very foundations of prosperity? The US President’ strongest supporters live in the declining states. The UK’s Brexit backers are mostly from struggling regions, as in rich countries the divide that…
Billionaires clocked their fortunes by a total of nearly £2billin per day last year, as the wealth of the world’s poorest dwindled by 11 per cent according to Oxfam. The world’s 26 richest people now hold the same amount as the poorest half of the global population, down from 43 in 2017. The worth of…
With the arrival of Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street in 1979 a major privatisation drive began not only selling industrial holdings, transport infrastructure, the telephone system but also the land and public buildings erected on it. Land makes a major chunk of national wealth and an estimate by the Office for National Statistics concluded…
Britain’s Glorious past and fall from grace featured by James Hamilton-Paterson, including Scotch Whisky, Triumph, who incidentally owned by industrial conglomerate BSA, who once provided motorbike for Steve McQueen, in The Great Escape and Marlon Brando in The Wild One, is to become one of the leading players in Britain’s flourishing motorbike industry, which…
George Magnus and economist questions whether China can continue to keep all its balls in the air as it tries to reconcile the needs of a market economy with the criticisms of a one-party state. His book Red Flag looks at the four traps that the party is trying to avoid –currency ( renminbi),…
Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister, clearly a fan of Adam Smith, gave a speech at the Edinburgh Book Festival, this week. His irritation with the rise of corporate power, oligopoly and monopoly which Smith was often concerned about. One of his quotes “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment…