This is from the FT this morning, by Steingrímur Sigfússon: Iceland’s response to the financial crisis has been taken as a model for how a country should react to a dramatic economic shock. However, international observers should also take note of our country’s recent election result. Despite guiding the country through a difficult but impressive recovery, the governing
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This is by Martin Wolf in the FT this morning: Last week the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was reported to have passed 400 parts per million for the first time in 4.5m years. It is also continuing to rise at a rate of about 2 parts per million every year. On the present course,
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The Guardian had a great animation yesterday on the unburnable carbon that could now be inflating stock exchange values of a large range of quoted mining companies. I share the view that this could be the next financial crisis in the making. The animation is available here (please don’t click this image – I can’t make it work!)

The FT has reported this morning that: Microsoft has given the strongest signal to date of a change of heart over its new Windows 8 operating system, as it revealed that the weak response to the software had wiped out underlying growth in its core business in the third quarter ended March. Sometime, somewhere, someone is going
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Larry Elliott argues this morning: Financial markets have become stimulus junkies. They crave their next fix of quantitative easing and when they don’t get it they turn ugly. He’s right, although I’m not sure  he’s right for the right reasons. The world’s markets need QE because banks aren’t creating enough new money by lending. That’s because, small businesses who get
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The FT reported yesterday (and I missed it then) that: Lord Turner, the departing chairman of the Financial Services Authority has defended financing government spending by printing money arguing that, within limits, it “absolutely, definitively [does] not” lead to inflation. Speaking before a farewell speech in London on Wednesday, Lord Turner, who applied unsuccessfully to be the
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I do like this, from Olivier Blanchard and David Leigh at the IMF in a new working paper: This paper investigates the relation between growth forecast errors and planned fiscal consolidation during the crisis. We find that, in advanced economies, stronger planned fiscal consolidation has been associated with lower growth than expected, with the relation
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I can’t pretend I live up to this, but it’s well worth reading and thinking about: Available for download here.

Martin Wolf asks in the FT this morning wheteher there are limits to growth. He’s right to do so. But maybe a little behind the times. I read this book when I was a sixth former in the mid 70s: If anything made me green, it did. And my copy looks just as battered as that one
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