Kit McMahon

In Politics and the Pound, Philip Stephens has produced a book which should be required reading for anyone aspiring to be either Chancellor or Prime Minister. Let’s hope Gordon Brown and Tony Blair are studying it carefully. They can legitimately enjoy the more egregious mistakes made by the Tories since 1979, but they should be sparing with their scorn. They should remember the errors of previous administrations; and be thankful they did not win the last election and inherit an ERM membership which they had supported when in opposition.

What are we to make of a book entitled The Death of Economics, the second half of which is called ‘Towards the Future of Economics’? Paul Ormerod’s book has already provoked excited reviews from people thrilled to have their prejudices against economists and economic forecasters confirmed by one of the profession, an economic forecaster himself for ten years, who proclaims in his Preface that conventional economics is ‘deeply flawed’, and that its prescriptions for the problems of inflation and unemployment are ‘at best misleading and at worst dangerously wrong’.