Robert Skidelsky

Since the global financial crisis in 2008, policymakers were having trouble finding the correct measures to pull the world economy out of the slump. Quantitative easing? Fiscal austerity? Neither seem to have fully achieved their anticipated outcomes. Is this due to flaws in today’s prevailing economic thinking? On Thursday 13th of April, Room for Discussion has the honour of discussing this question with special guest Lord Robert Skidelsky. Mr. Skidelsky is an economic historian, famous...

   LONDON – Clearly, the last word has not been said about the chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib Province, Syria, on April 4, which left 85 dead and an estimated 555 injured. But three points – concerning responsibility for the attack, the United States’ military response to it, and the episode’s effect on the course of Syria’s civil war – need to be made. First, all governments lie, not congenitally, but when it suits them and they think they can get away with it....

LONDON – Nothing so riles Western opinion about Russia today as its law on foreign agents. Enacted in July 2012, the law requires all non-commercial organizations (NCOs) engaged in (undefined) “political activities” to register with the Ministry of Justice as “carrying functions of a foreign agent.” A follow-up measure in 2015, the Undesirable Organizations law, required any such NCO to identify itself publicly as a “foreign agent.”The wording is peculiar and significant. What, after all, are...

LONDON – The question of the West’s relationship with Russia has been buried by media stories of hacking, sex scandals, and potential blackmail. The dossier by former British spy Christopher Steele about US President Donald Trump’s activities in Moscow some years ago may turn out to be as credible as the claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction – or it may not. We simply don’t know. What is clear is that such stories have distracted attention from the task of bridging...

SUBSCRIBE for more speakers ► http://is.gd/OxfordUnion Oxford Union on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theoxfordunion Oxford Union on Twitter: @OxfordUnion Website: http://www.oxford-union.org/ Baron Skidelsky, FBA is a British economic historian. He is the author of a three-volume award-winning biography of British economist John Maynard Keynes. Skidelsky read history at Jesus College, Oxford, and is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick, England. ABOUT...

  LONDON – Let’s be honest: no one knows what is happening in the world economy today. Recovery from the collapse of 2008 has been unexpectedly slow. Are we on the road to full health or mired in “secular stagnation”? Is globalization coming or going?  Policymakers don’t know what to do. They press the usual (and unusual) levers and nothing happens. Quantitative easing was supposed to bring inflation “back to target.” It didn't. Fiscal contraction was supposed to restore confidence....

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   My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Desai. I will take up one or two things he said, but a preliminary question that occurred to me is: if the private sector is so flush with money, why is it not investing more of it? Why does it need government help to do so? The answer that occurs to me is that the private sector does not see sufficient demand to justify the kind of investment that would employ those funds that are sitting idle. I will come to...

   Volume 776 12.55 pm My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for making this debate possible. The most dramatic economic effect of the United Kingdom’s Brexit vote has been the collapse of sterling. Since June, the pound has fallen by about 16% against a basket of currencies. Mervyn King, the former Governor of the Bank of England, has hailed the lower exchange rate as “a welcome change”. Indeed, with Britain’s current account deficit in the order of 7% of...

  John Maynard Keynes would have been conflicted by the referendum. Culture pulled him towards Europe; politics and especially the continent’s current austerity economics would have pushed him increasingly away. Churchill talked about the “three majestic circles” of the Commonwealth, the United States and Europe. But over Keynes’s lifetime, the reality was that Britain was firmly locked into only two of them: the special relationship with the US, and its own imperial preference...