The War Dividend
It’s a sad fact that war can pay. The US arms industry is one major beneficiary. The UK is a long way behind, but it also a big supplier of armaments to the world. If governments of the world upped th...
9 Okt 202436min
Have marketers made Marx surplus to requirements?
Phil tells Steve that he’s always struggled with Karl Marx’s idea of surplus value. The idea that workers work for themselves, then a bit more to create the profit for a business. Phil says, that seem...
2 Okt 202436min
Why is the US economy doing so much better than Europe?
Europe and the US are both recovering from the same problem – COVID and the inflation that followed. But last week the Fed in the US dropped interest rates by half a percent, with markets expecting a ...
25 Sep 202435min
The Aggregate Problem
The UK’s unemployment rate is 4.1%, the inflation rate is growing at 3.1% and the economy is growing at 0.6% quarter on quarter. That’s how the economy is doing, what more do we need to know?Well, it ...
18 Sep 202434min
We fought the pandemic and the war won
The pandemic was the biggest economic disturbance since the second world war. In both cases supply chains were severely disrupted, either by German U-boats or, more recently, factories and borders clo...
11 Sep 202436min
Disposable Jobs
A couple of years ago, when warning of the need to fight inflation, Jerome Powell, Governor of the US Federal Reserve says interest rate would rise and jobs might disappear. Yet, interest rates have r...
4 Sep 202437min
The Old Age Liability
Some call it the silver tsunami. The wave of old people putting pressure on government budgets. And, as baby boomers retire and young people produce less and less children, western populations will co...
28 Aug 202439min
Could stubborn central banks drive us to debt deflation?
The last time interest rates were this high they came down rather fast. This time central bankers are determined to manage a slow unwind and deliver a return to growth without wreaking havoc on the ec...
21 Aug 202435min
