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I was not able to make it to last weekend’s extravaganza of classic cars, racers and glorious carbon-emitting beauties of Formula 1, but I certainly wish I was there. The Goodwood Festival of Speed, held in west Sussex in July, is always a great event. Here’s the sort of vehicle that will be running. Serious petrol-head eye candy. July 7th, 2009 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Distance can lend enchantment, and I fondly remember my holiday trips out west to California, trekking in Yosemite, drinking wines in Napa, gorging on seafood in San Francisco and Monterrey, firing handguns in Santa Clara, and wandering around Getty’s art museum in Malibu. Wonderful stuff. I started going there in the early 1990s to visit an old US buddy of mine who lived in Cupertino, in the San Jose area, at the time, working in the software business, as almost everyone else there seemed to do at the time. It seemed bright, shiny and incredibly affluent. IThe locals were very friendly. It is easy to see why the area can appeal to an outsider who has become fed up with crusty old Blighty. But, and it is one hell of a big but, California has serious problems. The state government is about to go bust. The locals seem unable to stomach voting for less spending to curb runaway debt. Thousands of firms are relocating to cheaper places to do business where the regulations are less stifling, such as Nevada or Texas. California is, in many respects, a harbinger of what could happen to the rest of the US if Mr Obama gets his way with ideas such as carbon cap and trade, socialised medicine, heavier taxes on the middle and upper classes and more regulation of business. California is as near as it gets to a European-style social democracy. Well, the results are in, ladies and gentlemen, from this experiment, and it has been a disaster. And for that reason alone, it is hardly very reassuring that David Cameron, or iDave, as he is sometimes called for his enthusiasm for all things trendily tecchy, is looking to California as a model. Of course, there was once a part of California – Orange County – that was a hotbed of libertarian-style conservatism in the heyday of Barry Goldwater and to a certain extent, under Ronald Reagan. But unless I have missed something, that Goldwaterite spirit of rugged individualism has gone on the wane in the Golden State. It pays to watch California. In many ways, it has been a place that has set the tone not just for politics in the US, but by extension, in other English-speaking nations. So it pays to learn the right lessons. July 7th, 2009 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
There have been a few clashes between Switzerland and the US, and to a certain extent, Britain, in recent months over the fact that centuries-old Swiss bank secrecy laws prevent Swiss-based banks from divulging information about their clients to foreign governments that suspect people to be evading taxes. Evasion is not a crime in Swiss law, contrasting with the Anglo-Saxon legal distinction between avoidance (which is broadly ok), and evasion (which isn’t). UBS, the Zurich-listed banking and wealth management giant, is currently embroiled in a case in the US in which the Department of Justice is demanding that the Swiss bank reveals details on up to 52,000 US clients. UBS is, so far, telling the American authorities to sod off. But the affair has cost UBS: the bank has stopped offering offshore banking to US clients and other non-US banks may also follow suit, or start to do so. Meanwhile, countries such as Germany and the UK have been leaning on Switzerland to crack its secrecy laws, but that is not easy. To do so means that the Swiss electorate would have to approve primary domestic legislation and given that Swiss banks account for about 13 per cent of the country’s GDP, I can hardly see the Swiss voters, unless they are very stupid, throwing away one of their economic ace cards. And I have defended tax havens several times before, for those who want to see why I take my position in the way I do. In summary: I consider what some countries are doing to be nothing less than an attempt to create a global tax cartel, with jurisdictions such as Switzerland, Singapore or Monaco in the position of non-cartelised competitors. But as we have seen in the case of OPEC in the 1990s, when the oil price was low, cartels crumble eventually. I cannot see countries such as India, China, Russia or Brazil shunning the opportunity to provide low-tax attractions to investors who become fed up at the larceny of their home governments. Even though some taxes – such as sales taxes and land taxes – are quite hard to dodge, I think it is a mark of an open, free world that people can migrate to jurisdictions where the taxes are to their liking, rather than have all their options cut off at source, which the cartelisers would do. Unfortunately, the drive against tax havens is too good an opportunity for the current transnational progressive class to miss. Of course, the US has a tax haven called Delaware, and the UK has its numerous offshore dependencies, such as the Isle of Man, Jersey, British Virgin Islands and the Caymans. There is an element of cant to the stance taken by the likes of say, Barack Obama on this. So, drawing all this together from a symbolic point of view, I hope Roger Federer, the debonair Swiss tennis genius, overcomes the boom-boom serving machine, Andy Roddick. No offence Andy – who seems a nice guy – but I want the dude from the mountains to win. July 5th, 2009 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is a certain grim satisfaction in reading this story, on how one UK government minister – seen as a potential future Labour leader – has announced, without telling Gordon Brown, that the case for compulsory ID cards has been scrapped. Of course, the real issue remains that even without compulsory ID cards, we have a state database on every person in this country; and the aggregation of data about us gets more intensive, and is unlikely to be reversed regardless of the outcome of the next election. Too much money has been spent, too many corporate interests have been bought, for that to stop. July 5th, 2009 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Thanks to our vigilant commentariat, I read this excellent, pithy demolition of central banking by Jamie Whyte, the banker and writer on philosophy and other subjects. Good on the Times (of London) for running it. It’s a healthy antidote to the flawed semi-Keynesian nonsense of Mr Kaletsky. July 3rd, 2009 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
“When I stacked the shelves at my father’s grocery store, and I finished bringing the boxes up and emptying them and pricing everything, I wanted to see the shelves just sparkle. I called my dad over – I had a great father – he’d pat me on the back, “Fantastic!” Ed Snider, American sports entrepreneur and philanthropist, from an interview with Stephen Hicks. This quote, I hope, gives some flavour of the zest and energy of a great, principled businessman who does not seek government handouts or favours. The interview is long but worth a read. July 3rd, 2009 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is a bit of a debate going on over at The Corner, the National Review’s group blog, on whether the 150-year sentence meted out to Ponzi scheme fraudster Bernard Madoff is excessive. Well, given that the man is 71 years old, it is academic anyway since he will die in the slammer. But clearly, the length of the punishment is symbolic, though the judge could be accused of grandstanding – it might have been easier simply to sentence Mr Madoff to life imprisonment and have done with it. From a philosophical point of view, I am not sure whether such a sentence has much of an effect in deterring future fraudsters; the trouble with the notion of restituting victims of crimes, however, is that what on earth can a convict like Madoff do to pay back his victims tens of billions of dollars? If he did some kind of work until he dropped dead, it would be unlikely that he could generate a fraction of the wealth that has been taken from people. In some cases, folks lost their entire life savings. Now the snarkier folk out there might say, well, his victims were all incredibly rich so they will not suffer, but that is nonsense. Theft is theft; if you have honestly built a fortune and some shyster takes the lot, that’s a crime, period. But there is a problem with the idea of compensating victims when the size of a fraud is this huge. I’d be interested in what commenters think might be some practical solutions. June 30th, 2009 | 43 comments - (Comments are closed)
Some speculation is already generating about who might get the top job at the Institute of Economic Affairs, the think tank in the UK that is, in some ways, the grand-daddy of free market think tanks in the UK. John Blundell is going, having been in the post for some time. Guido has some rather barbed comments about Blundell. Guido mentions an old journalist friend of mine, Allister Heath, as a candidate. Allister would be great – but he is anyway going great guns at the financial paper, City AM, and may also have his eye on other journalistic positions in the future. But he would be a very strong choice for the role, although selfishly, I’d prefer it if those few of us who are libertarian journalists stayed in the profession. In some ways – these things are not easy to measure – I get the impression that more focused groups such as the Taxpayers’ Alliance have been making far more of the running in recent years than the IEA, while the Adam Smith Institute has been doing a lot of outreach work with universities and colleges, which is vital. But the IEA has a tremendous pedigree and it ought to be a coveted position to go for. The only reservation is whether it can command enough of a budget to get in someone at the right level. June 29th, 2009 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
I rather like the recently-launched magazine of UK current affairs, Standpoint. This item on Ken Loach, the film-maker, is particularly good. I wish the magazine success and it should give publications such as The Spectator, Prospect and The New Statesman a run for their money. June 29th, 2009 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Fraser Nelson, continuing his relentless and admirable campaign to track the sheer, barefaced dishonesty of Gordon Brown. Of course, politicians have always, with varying degrees, told lies or only partial truths, and Brown is hardly an original in this regard. Arguably the greatest lie, or set of lies, told to the UK electorate were told in the period leading up to the UK’s entry into the-then EEC, later European Union: namely, that our entry into the Community was in no way a loss of national sovereignty. In fact I am sure that I recall reading – sorry, cannot find the source – such pro-EEC journalists as Hugo Young saying that it was admirable and necessary for the likes of the late Edward Heath (curses be upon him) to bullshit the public. Even so, Brown’s denial of his own budget arithmetic, when it can be so easily checked, is a jaw-dropper. But what is encouraging is that parts of the media, even the fairly lefty bits, are not buying the line that there will be no cuts in spending over the next few years. Of course, if Brown is refusing to make spending cuts, then I guess that fits with the whole “scortched earth” idea that he has: he knows Labour will lose the next election, probably quite badly, but out of a mixture of low cunning and sheer evil, he wants to bequeath a terrible inheritance upon the next government. Yes, I said evil. Mr Brown is an evil man. In fact his invocation of his puritanical Scottish religion is part proof of that. June 29th, 2009 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
A nice piece by Jesse Walker at Reason about the late Michael Jackson. I think Off the Wall was one of the first pop albums I remember listening to, and of course Thriller, with that unbelievable video, was the one that helped propel MTV as a vehicle for music. Those two records remind us not only of what a great performer Jackson was in his heyday, but also of the musical genius of Quincy Jones. Yeah baby! I also sympathise with Jonah Goldberg, who is a bit caustic about the whole spectacle of mourning. The weirdness and the allegations of criminality that swirled around Jackson in his life are well chronicled, and should not be brushed under the carpet. And remember that people, who are unknown to all but their family, work colleagues and friends, die of heart attacks every day. The truth is, that unless we take a bet on cryonics and join the Singularity, that the Grim Reaper gets us all eventually. June 26th, 2009 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Orwell was right. It was Wells who made it respectable, even before World War I, for liberals in England and America to demean their own native democratic culture in the name of an imagined antidemocratic World State. And it was Wells, with his stature as the prophet of the future, who taught upper-middle-class liberals that they were entitled to govern in the name of social evolution.” Fred Siegel, writing on HG Wells. It is fair to say that the Fabian movement of which this man was such a key part deserves to go down in infamy, given the damage it has done in so many ways. June 26th, 2009 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
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