In my latest Loonie Politics column I mock policymakers and pundits who say the laws of economics have changed because they haven’t but these trendy faddists thought they had.
“as with every prognosticator who claimed that ‘this time is different,’ she [Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland] (and the rest of the country) has learned the hard way that the laws of economics are not only immutable, they are cyclical.”
John Ivison in National Post January 24, 2023.
In my latest National Post column I say the tricksy maneuvering over the U.S. debt ceiling, in which the one problem no one seems able address is chronic overspending, reminds me uncomfortably of late ancien régime France.
In my latest Epoch Times column I say at their national convention the federal Liberals should have tried to sell themselves to the nation as older and wiser not conceited and reckless.
“To define it rudely but not ineptly, engineering is the art of doing for 10 shillings what any fool can do for a pound.”
The Duke of Wellington according to AZ Quotes [https://www.azquotes.com/author/15482-Duke_of_Wellington]
In my latest Epoch Times column I contrast Australia’s admittedly parsimonious awakening on defence to Canada’s ongoing opium dreams.
“The key to any good policy, Prescott summarized, was to make a commitment and stick to it. ‘What I am going to describe for you is a revolution in macroeconomics,’ Prescott wrote in the American Economist in 2006. The essay further distilled theories from a seminal 1977 paper by Prescott and Kydland, titled ‘Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans’... ‘You should not think in terms of controlling the economy,’ Prescott said in 2004. ‘That leads to bad outcomes. You should think in terms of committing to good policy rules.’… ‘Economists like simplicity. It’s one of our most endearing traits,’ he wrote in a 2006 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. ‘As soon as you complicate things by getting between a man and his intentions you create all sorts of distortions that are often suboptimal (and are the devil to model). Taxes excel at these shenanigans. And those distortions don’t end when the grim reaper comes calling. Ashes to ashes, dust to trust.’”
The obituary of Edward Prescott, who shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics, in the National Post November 14, 2022
In my latest Loonie Politics column I say Justin Trudeau’s totally out-of-touch aristocratic remarks about borrowing via credit cards may finally bring him down politically.