Those of you who have followed my LinkedIn posts or been on Zoom calls with me during the pandemic will know that I am an avid book reader. My Napoleonic War military drum bookcase, full of a mix of Waterloo, cricket and college history books, has elicited several kind comments. At the last count I […]
Global
Green jobs are a cost, not a benefit
The International Energy Agency recently reported that shifting to clean energy will create between 13 and 26 million jobs by 2030. They present this as a benefit, but that’s misleading: jobs are not a benefit, but a cost. That might sound counterintuitive, but it’s easy to understand. Say you need to do repairs on your home and […]
Letter from Paris: gastronomic disruption
Originally published February 2021. The word of this extraordinary winter in Paris has been couvre-feu. The very expression is still heavy with associations from the 1940s occupation, even if the order to “cover your fires!” was originally intended to protect medieval wooden cities from burning down. The mid-January tightening of France’s latest couvre-feu – to […]
A tale of two pizzas: are property values really yours to keep?
Spoiler: No, they’re not. However much we love our homes and the dollar figures that realtors assign to them, those values are not ours until the day we sell. But let’s start with the pizzas. Say you run a pizzeria in your town. You sell good pizzas and make a decent living. You’re too small […]
Risk management in African real estate
Originally published April 2021. When thinking about successful emerging market investing, the following quote comes to mind: “In an unfamiliar culture, it is wise to offer no innovations, no suggestions, or lessons.” (Maya Angelou, American poet and civil rights activist). The notion to watch and learn before arriving at conclusions is particularly important in rather […]
What if a great crypto crash is coming?
In 1929, Ludwig von Mises rejected a job offer for a high position at the Austrian bank Kreditanstalt. He believed that a great crash was coming and didn’t want his name associated with it. Since then, economists of the Austrian school have successfully managed to avoid association with any economic crash. To prevent association with […]
The Hume-Rousseau affair
When David Hume learned in 1762 that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was interested in relocating to Britain, he got busy to make that happen. The two men first met in Paris in 1765. They travelled together from Paris to England in January 1766. Hume arranged lodging for Rousseau, otherwise tended to him and successfully procured a pension for him from King […]
The cycle will always be with us
It just isn’t possible to do away with boom and bust Mark Twain is alleged to have read a newspaper account of his own passing and declared, “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”. That story may well be apocryphal, but it has stood the test of time rather better than Gordon Brown’s […]
The corrupt world of the central banks
We live in an era where central bankers have taken centre stage in economic policy. There has been a clear shift as elected politicians have stepped back and unelected technocrats have picked up many of the reins. Some of this is not a little incestuous, as politicians spending promises benefit from the QE bond buying […]
What if the past was always with us?
Nearly 40 years ago, I was researching the life and work of a relative, the Victorian novelist Mary Linskill; daughter of a Whitby jet worker and jailer. To do that properly I had to become a member of the Whitby and District Literary and Philosophical Society, which gave me access to Mary’s handwritten diaries in […]