As promised, in this episode of Cantillon Effects, I have considered in much more detail whether there is such a thing as a ‘Consumer’ in isolation? I ask if a person’s role as producer is not more important. I look at the part played by interest rates, capital, and entrepreneurs, as well as by the state. I argue that worship of that False God – the ‘Consumer’ – not only slows economic progress in general and encourages heavy-handed and often harmful policies of intervention but also that it leads directly to the wastefulness of Boom and Bust. [To listen instead to Part I and Part II of my podcast on this, please go to CantillonCH at SoundCloud, or search Apple Podcasts here and here and Spotify for ‘Cantillon Effects’] Continue reading
Tag Archives: consumption
Easy Money, Hard Times
Though the connexion is not always explicitly drawn, one obvious corollary of the perceived current shortfall in corporate investment spending is to be found in the lacklustre nature of the gains being recorded in something called ‘productivity’.
This latter deficiency is often said to have ‘puzzled’ the Good and Great who presume to be able to influence such matters for the better, but one can readily identify factors which implicate the policies of those same would-be helmsmen of the economy, themselves, in the discouragement they offer for capital formation and by the incentives they afford for less than ideal practices among businesses, consumers, and governments, alike.
For a downloadable PDF version of this article, please click: 17-10-27 Easy Money
US GDP – Where’s the Beef?
The old adage that ‘the market must climb a wall of worry’ – i.e., that the best bull runs take place to the accompaniment of a swelling chorus of doubters – seems to have taken on a broader application in the economy at large where everything and anything which can be negatively construed currently calls forth a howl of rancorous ‘I told you so’s’ from the Herd.