A recent article in The Economist pointed out that Britain, the original industrialiser for long in relative economic decline, owned 45% of the world’s foreign direct investment in 1914, but now has substantially less than 10%. The United States’ foreign direct investment peaked at around 50% in 1967 and is now less than half that. [...]
The desire to return to business as usual isn’t restricted to the obscenity of bankers’ bonuses. That same desire is shared by unemployed potters in Stoke on Trent, car workers in Detroit, and the governing politicians in London and Washington who are presiding over their people’s misery.
However, for the millions in China’s (not to [...]
The idea of economic man, sometimes given a Latin nomenclature to increase its gravitas, is the real cause of economics’ more recent failures. Forty years ago it was referred to as a nineteenth century idea, as though the study of economics had moved on since that primitive Victorian era. But with Friedman’s shareholder primacy in [...]
The idea that companies, if not all economic activity, exists to maximise the wealth of shareholders or owners, dominates the world of corporate governance and much else. Bankers and traders believe it. Industrial managers have been led to accept it. Universities and business schools preach it. It is part of the free market ideology, often [...]
As Nobel laureate Paul Krugman pointed out ‘a country is not a business’. So why, he asked, do politicians think it is sensible to ask a successful businessman for advice on running the country? Why, for example, is David Cameron asking Sir Philip Green for his input? His views are clear and predictable, and of [...]
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