President Obama’s budget, global post-2008 monetary policy and Greece’s election of the leftist Syriza government all reflect the same impulse: the desire to remove constraints that had previously been thought mandatory. Just as in our social existence we are seeing the merits of some of the constraints the baby boomers so enthusiastically discarded in the […]

“We are not worried. Our team is strong. We have Icarus in the wings” chortled Greek leftist Alexis Tsipras after his election victory. You’d think a Greek would remember that Icarus fell to a watery grave when his wings melted – the country’s education system is clearly not what it was. All the same, apart […]

Ben Bernanke spent his entire Fed career wittering about deflation, from his initial “helicopters” speech of 2002 on. Yet we never got it, or even close to it. Ironically, a year after Bernanke’s replacement by a like-minded successor, we finally appear close to genuine deflation. The balance of probabilities must still be against it, but […]

In an inevitable development, the proponents of greater government spending have developed a new theory to encourage it. With Senator Bernie Sanders (I.-VT)’s appointment of its proponent University of Missouri-Kansas City professor Stephanie Kelton as minority chief economist to the Senate Budget Committee, the new Modern Monetary Theory is about to get a serious airing. […]

Last week’s Economist magazine had a leading article and lengthy feature “The future of work” looking at the Silicon Valley companies such as Uber and Airbnb that, by creating the “on-demand economy,” have turned employees into freelancers. Their emergence has like most innovations been opposed by entrenched interests, with both Uber and Airbnb facing legal […]

The Greek government’s failure to elect a President has caused a snap election on January 25, at which the left-populist party Syriza seems likely to win a majority. Similar parties in Spain (Podemos) and to an extent Italy (the Five Star movement) are also a threat to established political norms. On the other political side, […]