I recently gave a talk about my research to the LSE’s Hayek Society. Our discussion ranged widely, inevitably majoring on the current economic climate. I suppose once the rather smug recriminations raining down through the media evaporate all we really want to know is: what next? What is the most effective and sustainable balance between private enterprise and public intervention, and how can we find it? Read More
Let’s face it, Jesus himself was no fan of regulation, continually clashing with the Pharisees over their legalism and replacing their red tape with the simple principle of love. And what got Luther cross, leading to the Protestant Reformation? His feeling that the brisk trade in Indulgences – religious securitisation – was evidence of the Church slipping back into something like this Pharisaic tradition: ‘justification by works’ when simple faith should suffice. What is terrifying about Luther, and about faith, is how risky it is. Read More
So what went wrong? Liquidity. Why? Exposure to sub-prime assets through complex financial instruments designed to reduce risk made banks chary of lending to each other. The knock-on effect of this was a collapse in confidence, as signalled through stock market indices. Self-righteous hindsight bemoans capital adequacy – which might have increased liquidity – and the hubris that led to over confidence in secularisation. But schadenfreude won’t restore confidence. Read More
Currently I am addicted to The Wire. When I last saw Dominic West in action, he was Edward Voysey in Barker’s The Voysey Inheritance at The National. Both are essentially about economics. The Voysey Inheritance is the story of a son finding out that his father, a much-respected solicitor, has been speculating with his clients’ capital, paying them an ordinary rate of interest and pocketing the difference. Written in Home Counties 1905, the world it portrays is vastly different from the world of The Wire, which is about drugs and corruption in modern-day Baltimore. Read More
