Tim Worstall

Or praising democracy anywhere in fact. An interesting but not surprising finding from Africa:

Felix Salmon points us to a report about hedge fund returns and tells us that they're now getting about the same returns as the general market. With this nice illustration:

Excecllent, Adam Smith is proved right again. For recall what he said about capital seeking returns.

This little snippet makes me rather angry. Irate even:

Grant Thornton, the accountancy firm, says that if wages increase at the rate predicted by government economists there will be a record 5.5 million higher rate taxpayers by 2015.

What to do about certain environmental problems is the great question of our age. It's obvious that, steering clear of contentious matters like the atmosphere, that we're driving some ecosystems entirely into extinction. How to stop this, how to solve these sorts of problems, is something we really ought to be concentrating on. And as it turns out, private property rights are indeed, for some subset of these problems, that very answer.

No, it's not just so that we can financialise all that is holy, expose the UK's great socialist experiment to filthy lucre. The reason, actually, is so that we can try and work out how to make the NHS better.

An interesting question being asked. If solar power is so great, if it's all just on he verge of becoming economic to use without subsidy, then why can't we see this in the prices and valuations of the companies that make solar power?

I thought this was a fascinating observation so I'll try and recast it into the UK situation.

Imagine a mid level supermarket, say, a Waitrose. Imagine then that a cheapy cheapy place opens next door, say an Iceland or a Lidl.

Imagining? Good, now, what happens to the prices in the Waitrose? Do they rise or fall?

Ah, yes, we've our old correct answer in economics again, "it depends".

This little snippet from City AM does not show what the journalist thinks it shows:

Admiral had outperformed the market with an unbroken run of profit increases since going public seven years ago, based on its ability to avoid high-risk drivers, but yesterday it said growth in its pre-tax surplus could be limited to 10 per cent this year.