Francis Coppola

"Best diss of the Quantity Theory of Money comes from Keynes", commented Toby Nangle on Twitter, referring to this paragraph from Keynes's Open Letter to Roosevelt (Toby's emphasis): The other set of fallacies, of which I fear the influence, arises out of a crude economic doctrine commonly known as the Quantity Theory of Money. Rising output and rising incomes will suffer a set-back sooner or later if the quantity of money is rigidly fixed. Some people seem to infer from this that output...

This is a silly chart: Why is it silly? Just look at what it implies for government and investor behaviour - and the future of the ratings agency that issued it.S&P forecasts a serious shortage of safe assets by 2050 if the developed nations, in particular, do nothing to adjust their fiscal finances in the light of ageing populations. Clearly, therefore, the price of sovereign bonds in the three "A" categories will rise significantly. S&P doesn't indicate which nations would be the...

After the Welsh Assembly elections - in which UKIP did rather well - I had a Twitter exchange with an angry Welshman. He said: @dsquareddigest @Frances_Coppola Most UKIP votes came from, erm, English migrants to Wales. Unbelievable. The famous 'white flight'. — Gweirydd (@gweirydd) May 6, 2016 I challenged this, of course. But in the ensuing heated discussion, I misquoted him: @gweirydd @dsquareddigest Why? You didn't support your assertion that UKIP voters were all English immigrants. —...

The last published accounts for the NI Fund show that, contrary to popular mythology, it does not have an enormous surplus. In fact it is currently running a deficit, as it has been for the last five years. Its reserves have fallen to the point where the Government was forced to top them up to prevent them falling below the statutory minimum of 1/6 of payments out of the fund. So I was somewhat surprised to read written evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee which appeared to...

In response to my post about the lessons of history, Claudia Dias sent me this clip from The Times, March 31st, 1939: Four months after Kristallnacht, and two weeks after Hitler's annexation of Czechoslovakia, the British government was still repatriating Jewish refugees. This group knew they were being sent back to almost certain death. No wonder they were hysterical.Today, refugees in Greece face deportation to Turkey, and from there probable repatriation to their own countries. If they...

Yesterday, at the final of the Kent Schools Public Speaking Competition, a young boy stepped up to the podium. "What have we learned from history?" he asked. "We have learned that no good comes from killing people". And he went on to speak eloquently, first of World War II: "There has never been another major war," he said.True, there has not. The uneasy peace of the Cold War did not descend into outright conflict, though it was a near thing: the world very nearly went up in nuclear flames...

I've written before about the arbitrary and cruel judgments made by DWP frontline staff in relation to ESA claimants, particularly the mentally ill. And Guy Standing, in his excellent books about the precarious lives of the "new underclass", describes how the process of claiming benefits creates huge amounts of unproductive "work". Benefit claimants have to "earn" their benefits by what amounts to jumping through hoops. But I confess that - not being a claimant myself - I lacked real...

There is a great deal of confusion over National Insurance - what it is, how it works and what it funds. I have attempted to clear up some of the muddle elsewhere. But partly, it stems from the existence of something called the NI Fund. If there is a Fund, surely this implies that National Insurance contributions are invested? If so, those (like me) who insist that state pensions are unfunded are talking gibberish.There is indeed a NI Fund. But it is badly named. It would be more accurate to...

The Manchester Building Society is sinking. It has reported a post-tax loss of £4.9m and a fall in reserves of £5.4m. This is not a one-off disaster due to an external shock. No, these results are symptomatic of a deep underlying malaise. The Manchester is in terminal decline, broken not by the financial crisis, nor by regulators, but by its own accountants.The Manchester's problems started in 2012, when it discovered that its accounting violated IAS 39 (IFRS 9) hedge accounting rules. For...

Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaueble has long been critical of ECB monetary policy,. But now, as Reuters says, the gloves are off. In a speech at a prizegiving for an ordoliberal economics foundation last Friday, Dr. Schaeuble demanded that the ECB raise interest rates.The justification? Very low interest rates hurt Germany's savers, which are the bedrock of its economy.There is a political dimension to this. Dr. Schaueble's party, the CDU, is losing popularity and desperate for...