Knowing and Making

At the end of an otherwise decent article in the Guardian , George Irvin trips over one of the oldest cliches in the left-wing rhetorical manual: Most important, we have not begun to question seriously whether placating the financial markets by means of such cuts is unavoidable. Perhaps it's time to start thinking the unthinkable: namely, that financial markets should be our servants, not our masters. This is a stupid distinction to draw, because markets are neither servant nor master of anybody. They are a place where people (or countries) can choose to go, and where we can each decide on our own participation within the structures available. Greece (more precisely, the people who run its exchequer) can choose whether to borrow money on the international markets. If it wants to, it enters into a two-sided arrangement with consenting investors on terms that both are happy with. If it then wants to default, it does have that option. Exercising that option will bring consequence...

Sports fans will mostly be familiar with the idea of live text commentary. If you can't watch the game, you can often find a live text stream on the BBC or Guardian websites giving you a minute-by-minute description of events. It's a good idea - it's much easier to multitask with the text stream in a window than while watching TV, while still retaining the dramatic tension of the game. Today, for some reason, the Guardian has come up with the hilarious idea of running a live commentary on the economics news. And yet - there is nothing to comment on! Here is the link - it started out at some think tank conference  but I think they've swiftly given up on anything good happening there. So they've started pasting in press releases from economics consultancies and updating us on the dollar-pound exchange rate. They did find one interesting piece of news, from the US inflation data. Mirroring the UK's experience last week, an announcement of monetary tightening...