Sadly, that headline could also be “If only our rulers understood (insert issue of your choice)”. Here it’s about losses on quantitative easing: In 2012 Osborne transferred profits from the scheme to the Treasury, lowering the Exchequer’s borrowing requirements – but agreeing, as part of this deal, to also bear the weight of any losses in future. However, higher interest rates and lower bond values mean the Bank is now losing money on the scheme. As a result, in the past year the Treasury has transferred £44bn to the Bank to cover the losses. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) expects ..read more

One of our unfashionable ideas is that we shouldn’t worry overmuch about intellectual property in poor places. Yes, IP like patents and copyrights is vital for some solution is necessary to that public goods problem. If anyone and everyone can just copy then little profit can be made therefore no one invests in the initial creation. When a new drug can cost $2 billion that’s a problem that has to be solved. But this has also led to an insistence, in some quarters, that everywhere should have to obey those same IP rules. And, well, no. Truly poor places have, by definition, no money. So, if the ..read more

Just a little note from the frontlines of the real economy. We’re oft told that the world is running out of metals and minerals. That’s why we need to recycle everything at whatever the cost. Simply because if we don’t then we’ll run out. This is not true. A circular economy is a very fine idea if the resource consumption - that is, the cost - is lower doing it that way. But it’s not necessary for the reason that we’re going to run out if we don’t recycle everything. Australian miner Lynas posted a slump in third-quarter sales revenue on Wednesday, missing analyst expectations on the back of a ..read more

A letter to the editor of the ASI blog Dear Sir, I was interested to read the findings of Mr Benanke’s independent review into the Bank of England’s forecasting and related processes during times of significant uncertainty.   It was a detailed analysis with all recommendations accepted by the Bank of England.   Within this detail, was a list of shortcomings which focused on the deficiencies of the Bank’s forecasting infrastructure. These included: out-of-date software, insufficient resources to ensure the software and models are adequately maintained, significant shortcomings in COM ..read more

Perhaps not as much as the idea that The Guardian employs economic journalists who manage this: What’s behind the record FTSE 100 high? Hopes of a UK interest rate cut and easing geopolitical tensions are not the only reasons for the intraday peak reached this morning Indeed, not the only reasons at all. We did read through the ideas offered and were most surprised (well, this is The Guardian so perhaps the “most” is not wholly true) to find that the most obvious reason was not mentioned. The FTSE100 index is not inflation adjusted. Therefore as money becomes worth less - because people insist ..read more

Polly Toynbee has made a career out of shouting that we must be more like Sweden. UK public spending grew from 38pc of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019 to almost 50pc at the height of the 2020 pandemic after Rishi Sunak as chancellor announced huge taxpayer subsidies to pay people’s wages during lockdown. Spending has since come down to 44pc of GDP but remains far higher than its pre-pandemic level. And: Sweden has one of the largest public sectors among OECD countries. Government spending was 49.2% of GDP in 2019, the fifth highest in the OECD We have, in these recent years, become very m ..read more

Useful information today: The switch to net zero risks driving up household energy bills by £400 a year after a jump in interest rates, a leading think tank has warned. Higher borrowing costs will massively inflate the cost of the green transition, the Resolution Foundation said, with families set to spend an extra £29bn annually on energy by 2050 if rates do not return to 2019 levels. This shouldn’t be a surprise. As with nuclear, the vast proportion of the costs is the financing expenses. Fuel costs are pretty much zero for either, there are some operating costs but it’s the capital costs th ..read more

In the energetic pursuit of net zero, billions of pounds could be squandered needlessly. That’s the lesson from countries as diverse as Italy, the US and UK, where the rush to subsidise green projects suggests vast sums are at risk. Worse, they could be lining the pockets of multinational businesses and City financiers. Stamping feet, demanding that everything be done right now, squealing that we’re going to Violet Elizabeth Bott ourselves blue in the face unless net zero happens yesterday is going to be a very expensive way of trying to deal with the problem. This will, as Phillip Inman then ..read more

Patients have described the effect on their health and wellbeing of the “new normal” of drug shortages in the UK, which has led to three-month delays and 80-mile round trips to acquire medication. Simon Bell, a 43-year-old data analyst from Tyne and Wear, has cystic fibrosis and requires medication that allows him to digest food. “For people with cystic fibrosis, the part of our pancreas which releases enzymes and allows us to digest food doesn’t work, so we have to take these tablets, which does the job of what’s missing from our pancreas,” he says. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pande ..read more

Christopher Booker used to note this about lead acid battery recycling here in Britain. But today’s example comes from India: India has 11 similarly vast solar parks, and plans to install another 39 across 12 states by 2026, a commitment to a greener future. Yet this solar boom has a downside: the waste it generates from the panels, made of glass, aluminium, silicon, rare-earth elements; as well as power inverters and wiring. One minor piece of pedantry, solar panels do not contain rare earths. But, you know, sigh. Solar panels are made of things though, when the solar panels are end of life ..read more