Columns
Hugo Dixon: UK should get on front foot with City
Britain has been playing a defensive game in response to the barrage of misguided financial rules from Brussels. It now needs to sell the City as part of the solution to Europe’s problems. The opportunity is huge. It could even help keep Britain in the EU.
Edward Hadas: Keynes, fertility, and growth
When Niall Ferguson slammed into Keynes, he was worried about the policy implications of the economist’s general theory. But the pundit’s sexual slur raises a more interesting issue: how to create a truly fertile economy. Keynes has something to offer to that debate.
Hugo Dixon: Brexit would be bad for Britain
Membership of even an unreformed EU is better than quitting. Exit would mean either not having access to the single market at a huge cost to the economy, or second-tier access without a vote on its rules. What’s more, if the UK stays in, it has a chance to reform the union.
Edward Hadas: Rana Plaza and union labels
Disasters such as the 900 plus deaths at a Bangladeshi clothing factory are inevitable when a shared sense of responsibility does not restrain bargain-hungry consumers and business-desperate suppliers. The U.S. garment trade was cleaned up. It can be done again, globally.
Hugo Dixon: How to respond to UKIP’s surge
Britain’s Conservative party will be tempted to move to the right on immigration and Europe to prevent more defections to the UK Independence Party after last week’s local elections. Business should urge it to stay in the centre.
Review: Errors key to global warming trajectory
Rupert Darwall’s book shows politicians locked us into global warming belief before scientists had evidence for it. Then a self-perpetuating U.N. bureaucracy and conflicted scientists manufactured evidence to order. The results have been toxic.
Edward Hadas: In favour of much less trading
When the Chicago options exchange closed for three hours, traders were unnerved. No one else was, and a rationing of liquidity may bring economic benefits. Perhaps it is time to extend traders’ millisecond-long holidays and revert to once-daily price fixings for all markets.
Hugo Dixon: Austerity debate misses half the point
It is true that governments, especially in the euro zone, shouldn’t chase an austerity spiral ever downwards. But they can’t just sit on their hands. They must drive even harder for structural reforms.
Review: China, luxury and unfashionable economics
Useless things bring social honour. So argued Thorstein Veblen in his “Theory of the Leisure Class”. His century-old ideas, now out of place in the West, explain China’s craving for luxury goods. There’s a warning too: “conspicuous consumption” breeds conspicuous inequality.
Music fest Coachella rocks a sustainable business
After 14 years, the world’s top-grossing festival officially transcended the brands of the artists it coaxed to the California desert. Careful, if not bold, musical curation and a security apparatus suited to a post-Boston world will ensure Coachella thrives for years to come.
