Tim Worstall

Some Tories believe that Cameron’s attachment to the nobility will resurface when he no longer has to face the electorate. They believe that when he eventually stands down Cameron will revive the tradition of granting an earldom to a former prime minister. The Camerons would become the Earl and Countess of Witney, the name of [...]

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Worth reading.

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So we’ve this lovely piece on self-build housing. Building costs in Almere vary depending on how much the buyers do themselves, but she says they average from €800 per sq m to €1,800. That’s around £72,000-£160,000 for someone wanting the same sort of floorspace as the typical British three-bed semi (around 105 sq m). Yup, [...]

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There are many things I can do in life, but making Polly happy is not one of them, I’m afraid.”

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Italy had to pay record rates in a €10bn bond sale, Hmm, those were 6 monthers that they sold. So, if we adopt the terminology of the US markets, these were not bonds, they were bills (bills under 1 year, bonds over what is it, 5 or 10 years, notes inbetween?). So the question we [...]

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So if the euro breaks up, where are those currency values going to go? As Jeremy Warner points out, they’re not actually that far out of whack. Except these are the numbers against the US$. Given how much more the eurozone economies are integrated with each other than they are exposed to the $, what [...]

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At the ASI. Using Adam Smith to explain hedge fund returns

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Good to see Hugh Bonneville making a rare public appearance with his wife, Lulu. The couple, who married in 1998, attended the first night of Matilda. The West End musical, which is staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, will have brought back happy memories for the actor, 48, who began his career at the RSC, [...]

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Excellent. A higher marginal propensity to consume among retarded Americans is precisely what is needed to get us out of this slump. I see this as a strong buy signal for stocks. If you don’t believe that then you’re not a Keynesian.

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So here’s an interesting little idea. Yes, we’ve a new report out from our retired accountant from Wandsworth today. About the huge amounts of tax revenue that are lost to governments as a result of the grey economy….the legal activities but illegal because they’re not paying tax, not the black economy which is illegal activities [...]

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Unpacking this little piece from the UK’s number 1 economics blogger: The answer is that it matters for three reasons. The first is that we wouldn’t have a world economic crisis now if we hadn’t had tax evasion. The current crisis focuses on the Euro. Italy is at its epicentre. It has external debt of [...]

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On tax evasion around the world. Impressive number crunching but sadly there’s a logical hole in it. His method has been to take the average tax rate, the size of the shadow economy and then multiply one by the other to give the amount of tax evasion. But that is making the assumption that all [...]

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When I did a little report on the FTT I was taken to task thusly: Third Worstall assume that marginal rates of tax in Europe are between 40% and 50%. That’s not true. Average overall rates in Europe are less than 40% based on research I will publish very soon and since most tax systems [...]

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It’s the secrecy which does it you know. If only things weren’t secret then kittens would gambol freely in the Sun, unicorns would poop rainbows and all would have a pony. www.domainsbyproxy.com “Your identity is nobody’s business but ours” whois tackletaxhavens.com [Querying whois.verisign-grs.com] [Redirected to whois.godaddy.com] [Querying whois.godaddy.com] [whois.godaddy.com] Registrant: Domains by Proxy, Inc. DomainsByProxy.com [...]

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Trains, planes and ferries were at a standstill today as Portugal held what unions said was the biggest general strike for 20 years, with factories shutting down and the former president Mário Soares urging people to fight “international financial anarchy”. I didn’t actually notice a thing. Nothing around here was any different at all.

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But perhaps the biggest sin of the lot was effectively to render all credit default swaps (a form of insurance against default) on sovereign debt essentially worthless, or void, by making the Greek default “voluntary”. This has made it impossible to hedge against eurozone sovereign debt purchases, and thereby destroyed the market. Worse, it’s made [...]

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Mrs Merkel said treaty changes would “make clear that we must take steps toward a fiscal union to express the conviction that we know policies must be more closely coordinated if you have a common, stable currency.” “It is political confidence in Europe that has been lost – we can only win it back politically,” [...]

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Under the Youth Contract, 160,000 workers aged between 18 and 24 will have half their wages paid for the first six months. The scheme will only pay half the minimum wage – worth £2,275 – to employers who will then make up the difference. Wouldn’t just halving the youth minimum wage achieve the same effect? [...]

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Labour List seems to grok it too.

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This is actually rather fun. By that I mean Labour needs to begin talking about taxes as if they are a good thing  –  because that is true. Tax is what pays for so many things in life that we too easily takefor granted but which are essential to us all, like the NHS, education, [...]

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