Britain's use of our greatest natural resource - our land - suffers enormous problems. The first is that social improvements such as the building of tram or underground lines create vast increases in private wealth and income, but these gains in value currently accrue wholly to private property owners. The result is that the public sector has little incentive - and worse, no financial means - to invest. Because of [...]

This month, the Treasury issued a paper on economic reform in Europe. It tells you how Gordon Brown sees his role in the world. It is to mount his pulpit and lecture lesser mortals on how to do it. But there is a problem. Britain still has a few lessons to learn from its European partners. A little humility would be more appropriate.

As the New York taxi drivers say, [...]

The Great Crash of 1929 still grips the popular imagination like no other financial event in history, throwing forward its shadow even today. The speed of the interest rate cuts in the United States over the past 16 months is testimony not only to deteriorating present circumstances, but to old nightmares.

There are parallels between then and now, after a long period when capitalism diverged from its pre-1929 form. The [...]

The Treasury used sometimes to be called the central department, which is as good a description as any. Sitting in the middle of the Whitehall web, controlling every public function that involves the spending of money, little of importance escapes its scrutiny. In the hands of a determined chancellor such as Gordon Brown, the Treasury is the motor of the government machine. From outside its aggressively frugal premises - all [...]

The most worrying aspect of the recession that has swept through Asia and much of the rest of the developing world since July 1997 is not that it is new but that it is alarmingly old. We had become used, after the second world war, to putting up with recessions as a response to rising inflationary pressures. A bit of domestic overheating as demand outstrips supply? Press on the interest [...]

Poor Oskar Lafontaine, who fell on his sword last week, is already on the way to Keynesian martyrdom. Brave Oskar asked for interest rate cuts to spur the European economy! Plucky Oskar told big business to pay higher taxes to fund social programmes for the poor! Doughty Oskar proposed a wholesale reform of the international monetary system! But he lasted only four months as a minister. The proposal for accelerated [...]

Whatever else the new year brings, it is unlikely to be economic contentment. Rarely has the world economy found itself in such a mess. If this was a business, the chairman and the board would be out on their ear.

A quarter of the world economy is suffering something that is already worse than recession. Japan, the world's second biggest economy, is in a depression of the most worrying kind: [...]