Tim Worstall

Oh, dear Lord, he falls hard for this nonsense. And that’s why many would go even further than this. There’s a growing campaign to strip banks of their right to create credit (and then charge interest on it), and to return that right to central banks. Few people realise that 97% of all money in [...]

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At last! A firm proposal. Return control of all interest rates (including interbank lending rates) to central Banks. Eh? Apologies, but I’m not aware that there was a time when central banks controlled all interest rates….not even interbank lending rates. Control of the base rate, yes, control of certain consumer credit rates (caps usually) at [...]

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It is also claimed that exponential economic growth is the only way of improving the environment – on the grounds that without growth, no nation will have the economic means to clear up the mess that it created in generating that growth. The absurdity of this assertion speaks for itself. It does? Oh. I was [...]

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As regards pollination, for instance, scientists have estimated that if we had to do by hand what is currently done for us for free by bees, bugs, birds and bats, the annual cost would be well in excess of half a trillion dollars. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But in the province of Szechuan in China, [...]

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Back in the 1970s, economists began to question how the engine of economic growth could be sustained at a time when productivity gains were starting to have a major impact on both unemployment and average earnings. And that’s exactly the pattern that has unfolded since then with significant advances in productivity replacing more and more [...]

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On the fall out from the banking crisis. A head of steam is building up for the re-imposition of capital ratio requirements, Eh? They never went away. They changed, certainly, but banks have indeed been required to have a certain amount of capital to hand. Has our Johnny never heard of Basel I and Basel [...]

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I’ve only skimmed the first few pages as yet but things don’t look good for our favourite Old Etonian Baronet. Here he is on the subject of Jack Welch, General Electric and the pollution of the Hudson River with PCBs. Jack Welch is the most celebrated Chief Executive of the last 30 years. Indeed, he [...]

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Or competition time. With a prize! Of course, regular readers will already own the prize, Still, worth entering. Although, as I’ve said before, Jonathan is a classical liberal in a part y which ain’t classically liberal. Ah well, his descion about morals and gaining power, not mine.  

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Record spending on cancer services has failed to improve survival rates significantly, a study covering two million patients suggests. Just a thought here. Perhaps even just the embryo of a thought. Perhaps the important thing is not how much money is spent on a specific activity or problem but how money is spent on a [...]

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Sigh. This manager talks of new claimants’ shock at hearing the dole is just £60.50. "They are totally incredulous," he says, as well they might be. "They ask, ‘how can I live on that?’" This punishing workhouse rate must be raised before there are bread riots. Err, no. Richard Layard: If you pay people to [...]

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Green power companies are heading for "crisis" and Britain should no longer rely on them to meet its energy security and climate change obligations, some industry experts are warning. They were always in crisis. They were never going to be able to plug the energy gap. Could we please have some news in newspapers?

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At the ASI. Law making by the outrage of the day.

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This is the latest thing we have to worry about apparently. Our water footprint. Me, I’m calling this one as bollocks. Why you might ask, why is Timmy simply snarling at the nice man instead of engaging with his arguments? Well, the nice man has form: Prof Lang, who coined the term "food miles" more [...]

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The latest figures produced by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders showed that there is no end in sight to the gloom that has engulfed the industry since last Autumn. Months of lay-offs, factory shutdowns and shift cuts have led to a 59 per cent fall in February compared to the same time last [...]

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British hotels are vulnerable to Mumbai-style attacks, anti-terrorist officers warn Who would have thought that a free society was vulnerable to hordes of maniacs firing automatic weapons? Rather more importantly, what can a free society do about such vulnerability without not being a free society? Might it not be better to suck up the vulnerability [...]

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The single greatest instance of intellectual foolishness today is the continuing pretense that politicians are serious people worthy of serious consideration.  They are scoundrels, each and every one, regardless of party (although some of them, it is true, are more scoundrelly than others).  For any scholar to pretend that these people are disinterested servants of [...]

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Men would rather date beautiful bimbos than ugly, clever women, finds survey. It’s amazing what the Telegraph considers to be news these days, eh?

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It’s all really rather amusing. Journalist on failing, near bankrupt, newspaper insists that there must be subsidies for the entire newspaper industry. Nothing like talking your own book, eh? He’s also wrong in fact as well as opinion. The LA Times (one of the papers he mentions as now being bankrupt) released some very interesting [...]

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The computers in the office have just been upgraded, cleaned up and generally supported. Just in passing, the tech said that the EU Parliament will not allow anyone on the network to run Windows Vista. Everyone’s on XP. Not exactly a vote of confidence in the latest iteration of Wndows, eh?

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But this ignored the fact that 80 per cent of the planned tightening comes in the form of cuts in projected public spending, compared with just a fifth from this and other tax increases. So the burden would fall primarily on the users of public services. No, not really. The burden would fall primarily upon [...]

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