Tim Worstall

Not a lot actually. I explained there are four ways to generate income growth in the UK. One is to increase consumer spending. Another is to stimulate business investment. Then there is extra government spending. Finally there are growing exports. And that’s it. The trouble is consumer spending is falling as incomes decline. And companies are not just not investing, [...]

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I want to know what transactions costs are. In fact, I’d like to know what transactions costs on a few contracts are. Now, in detail, I don’t really know all that much about futures and or options. But I need to find out a bit. So, this applies to pretty much anything. Oil, currencies, interest [...]

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to criticise the Occupy Wall Street and ’99%’ movement is both strange and shockingly incoherent Amanda Marcotte Might I suggest using that as the intro to all Ms. Marcotte pieces? Strange and shockingly incoherent?

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Under the government’s plans, all “sensitive” information held by MI5 and MI6 would be discussed in secret court hearings. “Special advocates”, security vetted and approved by the government, would see the information on behalf of individual defendants or claimants but not would not be able to reveal it to them. Such procedures, or alternatively vetted [...]

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But, the report’s authors claim, GM crops are adding to food insecurity because most are now being grown for biofuels, which take away land from local food production. Governments are stupid enough to insist that food be put into cars not people, therefore a method of food production has failed? For our next logical trick [...]

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The UK’s inequalities have been laid bare by new statistics that show wealthier British boys born today will live 13.5 years longer than their impoverished male peers. Meanwhile, a government-ordered report shows that low-income families are scrabbling to find more than £1bn to pay heating bills. Data from the Office for National Statistics showed that [...]

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All parts of the “grand plan” are flawed in some degree. Requiring the banks to address underlying problems of solvency by holding bigger capital buffers suffers from the obvious drawback that banks might choose further to contract their lending rather than raise more capital, thereby worsening the economic crisis. Many have already warned that this [...]

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Plans for UK’s first ‘clean coal’ plant collapse over £1.5bn cost Britain’s coal industry has been dealt a blow as plans for the UK’s first “clean” plant collapsed because it was too expensive. Yup. As Richard has been telling us for some time now, the economics of it all just don’t pan out. You’ve got [...]

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Open Europe has instead called for Europe’s banking system to be “fundamentally recapitalised” in a move that could cost as much as €372bn. Ahead of crucial G20 talks this weekend, the London-based think tank has called for leaders to ditch its plans to boost the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and push instead for a [...]

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We’ve been told that only the government can create jobs, that the private sector simply will not pick up the slack if government fires bureaucrats and that, well, cutting government jobs would be a total disaster. PwC said the net fall in public sector employment of around 290,000 between December 2009 and June this year [...]

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Oh, excellent, just fabulous. They manage to keep the joke going very well indeed.

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@hal_berstram Hal Berstram @Van_Patten Worstall is crazy – he seems to spend most of his time attempting to character assassinate Murphy. A fair and accurate description of this blog, don’t you think?

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France and Germany have reached agreement to boost the eurozone’s rescue fund to €2tn (£1.75tn) as part of a “comprehensive plan” to resolve the sovereign debt crisis, which this weekend’s summit should endorse, EU diplomats said. The growing confidence that a deal can be struck at this Sunday’s crisis summit came amid signs of market [...]

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Child Poverty Action Group‘s own research shows just how inadequate benefits are and why Currie’s claim that people are struggling because they’re wasting their money on lottery tickets and cigarettes is absurd. A family of two adults and one child on out-of-work benefits can expect to receive £186 a week (after housing costs). That’s only [...]

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Occupy SX insists that: We want regulators to be genuinely independent of the industries they regulate. Super, so does everyone else. The thing is, how are you going to go about abolishing regulatory capture? No one’s really managed it yet and we’ve had several thousand years of trying…..

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Guardian News & Media is eyeing premises in London’s expensive Covent Garden to open a lifestyle store, likely to be branded “G3″ – taking its name from the newspaper’s G2 supplement. The shop may form part of a larger “lifestyle space” and would sell “wholesome, ethical and environmentally friendly” products that sit comfortably with the [...]

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Even as MPs agreed to hold a Commons vote on a referendum, government sources made clear that the Tories would be whipped to vote against a poll. Mr Cameron’s decision to impose a three-line whip has angered many MPs, since the vote was called under rules the Coalition promised would give backbenchers more freedom. The [...]

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An unnamed actress is suing Amazon.com for more than $1 million (£630,000) for disclosing her age on its internet Movie Database website and refusing to remove the reference when asked. Sigh.

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Woah. We’re used to Mervyn King’s monthly letter to explain the latest inflationary overshoot by now — but this, this is still quite something. CPI inflation rose to 5.2 per cent in September, a 0.7 percentage point increase on the month before and equal to the previous record level set in September 2008. RPI inflation, [...]

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Well, yes, sorta: Another example is his use of stats to show the quality of life outside London, a famous phrase which those of us who enjoy it know to be true, but only in that vague, gut way that is anathema to statisticians. With his colleague Bethan Thomas, he searched for gold-standard data that [...]

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