Consolidation from Consolidation
‘The UK has been regulating for risk, but not regulating for growth’, post-2008 financial regulations have ‘gone too far’, said the Labour Chancellor. Yes, indeed.
It seems the government is not totally committed to economic masochism. On City regulation at least - a sector responsible for 10% of tax receipts and employing 1.1 million people - it is moving in the right direction. Vowing to rip up red tape and build on existing Mansion House reforms is a welcome relief from the policy churn present elsewhere in government.
The consolidation of the UK’s 86 local government pension schemes, comprising assets of £354 billion, into 8 ‘mega-funds’ is a good move for British pensioners and British growth. Bigger, agglomerated funds will be able to invest in a wider range of assets, benefit from lower per unit costs and attract top management talent. Importantly, pooled pension pots will have the necessary scale to invest more in infrastructure. This is demonstrated by Canada’s single fund for public sector pensions, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which invests 4 times more in infrastructure than the UK’s defined contribution schemes.
Given the UK’s significant infrastructural deficit, such investment is sorely needed. EY estimates that private sector investment in infrastructure would need to double over the next 15 years in order to meet a projected £1.6 trillion funding shortfall by 2040. This is vital for the UK’s social, energy, and defence objectives as well as increasing labour mobility and reaping the resulting productivity gains.
Loosened fiscal rules means more taxpayer money for infrastructure, but also more crowding out (gilt yields climbed from 3.75% to 4.41% between mid-September and Budget day) and a heightened risk of government waste. Look no further than the previous governments attempts to revive battery manufacturing in Northumberland. Despite a significant injection of government funds, the BritishVolt factory in Northumberland collapsed into administration with the majority of its 232 staff made redundant. Private sector investment, in a free market, is clearly preferable.
But reorganising pension funds won’t lead to more investment in infrastructure unless infrastructure is actually ‘investable’. The UK doesn’t exactly have a brilliant record of delivering infrastructure in a timely or cost-efficient way. Remember HS2?
The projected cost of the Phase One Line from London to the West Midlands increased from £30bn to £59.7bn in 2022/23 (accounting for inflation!) and is still under construction. Supply side reforms to the planning system are a big part of the answer, enabling meaningful returns to be realised from such investments.
To her credit, the Chancellor has (for now) avoided the temptation to mix objectives: seeking both to maximise pensioner returns and compel domestic investment. The attraction is undeniable – numerous delistings and long-term LSE stagnation has left the entire FTSE 100 smaller than a single American company, Apple, meanwhile just 4.4% of UK pension assets are held in our own equities (compared to a 10.1% global average). More investment here would obviously be welcome, but compulsion is no substitute for competitiveness. Given the state pension could become financially unsustainable in just 10 years (as our paper Up in Flames: The State Pension by 2035 highlights), it’s important that funds are seeking to maximise returns, without being constrained by geography.
The government meanwhile could set about dismantling the many self-imposed disincentives on inward investment.
Funds plucky enough to buy British equities are hit with a 0.5% stamp duty levy, in contrast to a 0.3% fee on French equities, a 0% fee on Japanese equities, or the miniscule 0.002% transaction cost on American shares. More broadly, overhaul of the obscene levels of tax and regulatory burdens facing UK companies might make them attractive for overseas and domestic investors again. Needless to say, the Chancellor’s budget, hiking costs for businesses on hiring workers, raising capital gains tax, went the other way.
Culturally, there is much need to redress the increasingly risk averse culture among British investors, which leans towards old legacy industries such as oil and mining at the expense of dynamic tech and AI firms. Funds have also shifted to low-risk debt instruments, with the portion of Defined Benefit pension plans invested in bonds having more than doubled since 1997 and now comprising the majority of their £1.4tn asset portfolios. The small size of existing funds also limits their ability to invest in high return venture capital and life sciences.
Figure 1: The increase in bonds as a percentage of British pension scheme holdings 1997 to 2021 (Jeremy Hunt’s ‘Mansion House reforms’ seek to channel pension savings into unlisted firms- The Financial Times)
In an era of ‘predictable volatility’, where market volatility is the norm, the renewed emphasis by politicians and regulators on sector (not regulation) growth is a prerequisite to ensure the City remains globally competitive. The government’s querying of FCA proposals to more aggressively ‘name and shame’ firms investigated for misconduct, plans to ease the financial services redress regime and the shortening of the deferral period by 3-years for bankers bonuses, suggests this is not merely rhetorical. The FCA, with its new ‘mandate for growth’, is also considering adjustments to bank capital requirements for smaller lenders to increase contestability and boost investment.
16-years on from the financial crisis, a growth-oriented agenda may at last triumph over ideological bank-bashing by the left. Awareness that in a post-Brexit context, with the benefits of passporting and free movement consigned to history, financial services deregulation isn’t just ideal but essential, does not seem to have eluded even them.
Thames Water cannot be solved until December 19th
Thames Water, as we all know, is in something of a financial pickle. This does not worry us despite our involvement in water privatisation. More accurately, this does not worry us because of our involvement in water privatisation. That one group of capitalists fail at running a firm is not a problem with capitalism and markets - it’s the point. It’s exactly that those who run something incorrectly lose their money which produces the incentives to not run things wrongly.
Now, whether or not they have in fact run Thames Water wrongly is another and entirely different conversation. It’s possible to point out that expectations have risen rather more swiftly than reality can keep up with and so on. But leave all of that aside. The utility itself will exist even if the current corporate shell disappears and that’s exactly how capitalism and markets do work.
However, a point that we’ve not seen anyone else make. Which might mean we’re wrong about this of course - being the only head above the parapet is not always the sensible thing to be doing. But we’d strongly suggest - to the point of insistence - that Thames Water as a problem cannot be solved until December 19th. For:
2024 price review
We are currently working on the 2024 price review (PR24). This will set price controls for water and sewerage companies for 2025 to 2030.
We consulted on the way we set price controls by publishing our draft methodology in July 2022 and we announced our final methodology in December 2022. We published our draft determinations on 11 July. The for the consultation on draft determinations closed on 28 August 2024 and we expect to announce our final determinations on 19 December 2024.
That’s from OfWat, the regulator.
Until prices, therefore cashflows, for the next 5 year period are known there is no possibility of even examining, let alone solving, the financial structure. Therefore no solution is possible until that publication date. Everything said before that date is pure vapidity.
Which does give us an interesting insight into Thames Water’s problems, no? Capitalism and markets might well be able to solve this problem if it weren’t for having to wait for the bureaucracy….
For example, this in a press release from the GMB union:
“Thames needs committed long term investment just to keep operating, never mind stop the leaks and cut the sewage spills.
“Then it must be held to account and deliver for customers, with its skilled workforce central to the turnaround
“If that investment isn’t forthcoming then the Government must act fast and put Thames into special administration.
“Ministers can’t sit back and watch the car crash.”
Everyone’s got to wait until Dec 19th. It’s the bureaucracy, see?
Tim Worstall
Forcing pensions to invest in Britain is a foul, lousy, idea
We seem to be getting financial repression coming back:
Emma Reynolds, UK pensions minister, has left the door open to forcing pension schemes to invest more in British assets if reforms fail to drive savings into domestic infrastructure and companies.
We’ve long suspected that this was going to be the other shoe dropping of that consolidation of all those 86 small pensions funds. Fewer, larger, are easier to force into governmentally preferred actions.
Reynolds said that while ministers had not taken steps to force pension funds to invest in British assets, it could reconsider “mandation” if the measures did not boost pension investment in the UK.
“We’re not talking about it for now, but let’s see where we get to,” Reynolds said, in an interview with the Financial Times. “Investment in pensions is, as you know, very generously provided for in terms of tax relief.”
Reynolds added that a decision to take further measures to push a higher allocation to the UK would be “left to the second bit” of the pensions investment review.
As we all know all economics is either footnotes to Adam Smith or wrong. Here’s we’ve one of those undesirables, a footnote which is wrong.
For Smith did point out that invisible hand thing:
A capital employed in the home-trade… necessarily puts into motion a greater quantity of domestic industry, and gives revenue and employment to a greater number of the inhabitants of the country…. Upon equal, or only nearly equal profits, therefore, every individual naturally inclines to employ his capital in the manner in which it is likely to afford the greatest support to domestic industry, and to give revenue and employment to the greatest number of people of his own country….
By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it…
At which point the unperceptive will demand more being invested at home because lovely, lovely, invisible hand. Or, of course, those looking for an excuse to spend - sorry, “invest” - the money of others will use it as an excuse.
Which is to footnote Smith the wrong way around. He’s describing what people already do. Even though the profits of the foreign trade are higher some just do still invest at home. That is, we’ve already got home bias in our investing activities.
As most of portfolio theory goes on to explain. Vastly - and it is vastly - too little of British capital is invested abroad. Sensible diversification would have investment allocation at something like, roughly at least, proportionately to each foreign market as a percentage of the global market. No one at all comes anywhere near this, foreign or domestic, but everyone should.
For the sake of the pensions to be paid in the future to those current savers hugely more should be invested in foreign, not at home. For that’s both what modern economics tells us and also the point Smith was making - we already have a significant domestic bias and we shouldn’t.
But they’re already talking about “mandation”. Which will, no doubt, come with insistence upon “investing” in MiliEd’s green schemes, diversity and possibly the recycling of rubber boats collected from the shores of Kent.
The actual way to increase investment in the UK is the other way around. Instead of forcing people into it tempt them. Make investing here something people want to do. Because the returns from a freer and faster growing economy are such that it will increase the pensions that can be paid in the future. At which point, of course, we might even get some of that foreign pension money coming in to overcome their own domestic bias.
We know that capitalists are profit hungry. They’ll invest in any old thing if they sniff that profit. So, if we desire investment we should have a system which promises decent profits. Make Britain a capitalistically interesting place to invest and see how the money rolls in.
Tim Worstall
Willy Hutton never does think through his arguments, does he?
Producers using an asset they use to produce from is hoarding apparently:
There is no acknowledgment of the potential wider benefits that go beyond the non-trivial contribution the tax will make to relieving the crisis in public services. The hoarding of land that has gone on….
That farming is an activity with large economies of scale, that farms need to be of a certain size to even be economic, seems to escape. But, you know, Will Hutton.
It’s the other argument deployed here which interests today:
…since the bung was introduced by Margaret Thatcher in 1984, which has so steadily driven up land prices and farmers’ rents, will at last be checked as some of the larger estates are obliged to sell parcels of land to pay inheritance tax, as they did before 1984 without the world falling in, rather than be enabled to own it in perpetuity. Young farmers, now increasingly crowded out of the market, will get a chance to buy land: there is the prospect of a levelling off, even a fall, in farm rents. New life and ideas will be brought to the rural economy as innovative, energetic farmers enter the market – and production even increases.
The argument is that high farmland prices are a barrier to new entrants into farming. We agree, as we’ve said before. High farmland prices also mean that the return on capital of farming is pitiful. As we’ve also pointed out before. And as we’ve pointed out more than once there’s a strong implication of these truths. We must abolish farm subsidies.
Farm subsidies drive up the price of farmland. This isn’t a difficult point to grasp. If farming were subsidyless then there would be less money in farming. Land would therefore be worth less. This is more obvious under schemes that just pay a per acre amount but it’s true of any form of such subsidy. More money from the activity means the limited stock of assets upon which to undertake the activity are higher priced. Just are, obviously.
So Hutton’s telling us it’s righteous to take money off farmers in order to reduce land prices. Possibly - but if we accept that contention then it’s also true that we should stop giving tax money to farmers in order to reduce land prices. Something we wholly agree with - we’re always more favourable to not spending taxes than we are to collecting taxes after all.
So, great. If it is just and righteous to tax land prices down it’s also just and righteous to abolish farm subsidies. Go the full New Zealand. So, when do we do this then?
Tim Worstall
Tim Jackson’s latest valueless report on food costs
We agree that it is possible that the diet of the country leads to some of what ails the country. We’ll even agree that a decent study of the issue might lead to suggestions for sensible policy on the matter. Tim Jackson’s latest report isn’t that decent study.
The UK’s growing addiction to unhealthy food costs £268bn a year, far outstripping the budget for the whole NHS, the first research into the subject has found.
The increased consumption of foods high in fat, salt and sugar or which have been highly processed is having a “devastating” impact on human health and Britain’s finances.
“Far from keeping us well, our current food system, with its undue deference to what is known colloquially as ‘big food’, is making us sick. The costs of trying to manage that sickness are rapidly becoming unpayable,” the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC) report says.
The full report is here.
It’s nonsense. We can show this very simply too. Yes, yes, there’s all the fashionable stuff in there, how pesticides and herbicides are poisoning us. Lots about UPF and they’ve even a Van Tulleken on board. But it fails at the first hurdle simply because the people who wrote it don’t have the first clue about economics. This point we’ve made before:
Fatties and smokers save the NHS money
This is one of those things which simply is true. For the NHS is a lifetime healthcare system. The full cost of a lifetime of healthcare depends, in part, upon the length of that lifetime. Those who die younger save the system some number of costs.
Yes, yes, of course it’s true that the treatment of those who die younger has costs. But also those years of not treatment have not costs.
Now, we have actually read enough of the literature to be able to say that younger deaths save money overall. But that’s not a necessary part of why we can reject this Tim Jackson report. For Jackson has noted the costs of treatment of those diseases which cause people to die young. He’s also noted the costs to the individuals who die young - loss of years of life and so on. Entirely and wholly appropriate and yes, he has agreed that the treatment costs are direct taxpayer costs, loss of life is an indirect one (or, in another phrasing, a private, not public, cost). But he’s not including - he’s not even mentioned it as a possibility, let alone included it in his numbers - the saving in healthcare costs from those who die younger.
We’ve not got a nett number here at all. Therefore it’s valueless as an attempted calculation of the nett number.
Again, note, whether our reading of the literature is correct or not - the nett effect is a saving in healthcare costs - doesn’t affect the insistence that the report can be rejected. Doing a cost benefit analysis without including the benefits - however macabre those benefits might be - is just bad science. Even, Bad Science. At which point the Professor needs to be told to do it again, properly this time. Or even, smacked and sent to bed without any supper (UPF containing or not).
Only after that can we start to consider anything else. Like this little gem: “ costs of providing every citizen in the UK with affordable, healthy and nutritious food.” This just before they announce that they’ll make food more affordable by increasing the costs of food by 55%. Umm, yeah…..
Tim Worstall
Milton Friedman was the Economist Who Changed Everything
The Nobel economist Milton Friedman, author of the Free to Choose book and TV series, died on this day in 2006.
His thinking, and passionate advocacy of free markets and the free society, changed the world. As the former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan put it: There are very few people over the generations who have ideas that are sufficiently original to materially alter the direction of civilization. Milton is one of those very few people.
Greenspan was right. For most of Friedman's professional career, from the 1930s to the 1980s, the world was dominated by government intervention, control, and planning. But at last a new approach came to dominate — Friedman's approach of free markets, open trade, personal liberty and capitalism. It would spread over the globe.
When the Berlin Wall fell, Tiny Estonia took Friedman's ideas wholesale — and as a result reversed 1000% inflation and 35% unemployment, becoming the 'Baltic Tiger'. Its young prime minister, Mart Laar, explained that Free to Choose was about the only Western economics book he could get his hands on in the Soviet times, and he did not have, as the West had, hordes of mainstream economists around to gainsay it.
After Mao's death, China opened up to Friedman's economic thinking too. The reformist Deng Xiaoping invited him to lecture there on the use of market mechanisms. It improved the lives of hundreds of millions. Even China’s present, socially controlling government continues to recognize the power of markets. India too, after decades of socialist failure, liberalised its economy in 1991, ending price controls, cutting taxes, scrapping regulations and abolishing public monopolies. Hundreds of millions there too now enjoy rising literacy, life expectancy, and economic prospects. The people of India and China may not realize it, commented Nobel economist Gary Becker, but “the person they are most indebted to for the improvement of their situation is Milton Friedman.”
Ever the optimist, Friedman was confident that his ideas would, in the end, win – as they did. But for decades he was in a very small minority. From the New Deal, through the Keynesian interventionism, exchange controls, nationalization and planning of the postwar years, most Western economists and politicians simply assumed that government economic management was both essential and inevitable. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union dominated Eastern Europe and exported international socialism to Asia, Africa and Latin America. It often seemed hopeless to resist. But Friedman relished the argument, winning over even his sternest opponents with his cheerful, commonsense, optimistic approach. A naturally brilliant teacher and communicator, he spoke to the wider public in his popular books, magazine columns and interviews, and of course through his hugely influential Free to Choose TV series.
Friedman addressed all the great public issues of the day — the importance of sound money, the damage done by trade barriers, the baleful effect of regulation, the folly of wage and price controls, the need for competition in the provision of education, the benefits of flat taxes, the poverty of state pension systems, the advantages of a negative income tax, and how the greatest harm done by drugs is the result of their being illegal.
He became, in fact, the world's leading exponent of personal and economic freedom — ideas that were once scorned and dismissed, but which now shape the lives of billions. Milton Friedman was the economist who changed everything.
Eamonn Butler is author of Milton Friedman: A Concise Guide.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Milton-Friedman-influence-free-market-Essentials/dp/0857190369
Mergers and closures among universities sound like an excellent idea
Of course, this is causing hyperventilation among the fainting classes:
Almost three quarters of universities are on course to be in deficit in the next academic year despite an increase in tuition fees, a report has found.
Nearly 200 universities in England are facing a financial crisis with the government’s raising of employers’ national insurance contributions wiping out extra tuition fee income, according to analysis by the higher education watchdog, the Office for Students (OfS).
Net income will be down by £3.5 billion and the sector will see a deficit of £1.6 billion without swift action, it predicts, and it did not rule out closures or mergers.
This is not a specific comment upon the funding levels. Rather, a broader point about closures and mergers.
There are, apparently, 285 higher education providers in the UK. Another count has 295 and another 276 Further Education Colleges. This might be the right number, might not be - again we are making a broader point.
Back when there were only two universities they could be, as they were, left to themselves. As the system expanded there was, as we know, more government involvement. But there becomes a size of the sector when detailed central management becomes impossible. This is just straight Hayek - increased complexity leaves us with no alternative management method other than markets.
Markets do mean that market forces have to be left alone to play out. The bad must be able to fail if we are to gain the incentives to improve. Surplus capacity must be culled, just as it must be possible to increase capacity if demand rises.
Once we’ve got a sector of a certain size - in any walk of life, profession or activity - then markets must be used as that management method.
Tertiary education with some 500 and counting providers is of that size. Therefore we must allow market forces to work. And closures and mergers of the dullards and unwanted is evidence of market forces at work; as is not allowing closures and mergers of the dullards evidence that market forces - recall, our only useful management method - are not being allowed to work.
We do not claim omniscience over who should close or merge. In fact, we admit to not having a clue which is rather our point. Nor does anyone else - which is why we’ve got to use markets.
Tim Worstall
There is no such thing as a permanent monopoly
The German car industry is showing, nicely, the truth of one of the contentions of the late Robert Bork. There is simply no such thing as a permanent monopoly:
But the real threat to German excellence did not come from within. In the early noughties, when the California-based Elon Musk placed a risky bet on Tesla, traditional automakers were staying away from electric vehicles because they did not want to cannibalise existing business, and the Germans were particularly hesitant. The new technology threatened to obliterate their combustible-engine edge and to endanger German suppliers whose components weren’t needed in electric vehicles (EVs). Tesla, backed by the might of the US financial markets, is now worth over $1tn, about seven times as much as Daimler, Volkswagen and BMW combined.
It’s entirely possible for someone to dominate a market at any particular point in time. Why they are able to do that will depend. It might be that they simply are the best at what is being done. There might be some legal barrier preventing competition. The entire set of economic institutions might be so borked as to prevent entry into that no longer free market. Which of these is true will - OK, should - determine what, if anything, is to be done about such market dominance. If it’s produced by excellence then leave well be, obviously. If it’s manipulation, whether by capitalists or governance then change the system that allows that.
But Bork did point out - and didn’t people laugh when he said it about Microsoft - that no monopoly is permanent. Technology changes therefore any dominance is subject to the underlying technology getting away from the domineering producer. Android happened to Microsoft. Electric vehicles are happening to the German car makers.
No monopoly is, ever, permanent. Something that needs to be kept in mind when considering action against dominance at any one point in time. We have this on fair authority after all:
While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
Messing up the entire legal and incentive structure of the economy in order to deal with some inevitably temporary issue of dominance might not be a good idea….
Tim Worstall
Transforming Ugly Buildings
It has been obvious for years that bleak concrete buildings create bleak concrete minds. Now it’s been said by the Centre for Social Justice
Ugly buildings and shabby surroundings are fuelling an epidemic of loneliness, according to a report by the Centre for Social Justice. It says the government should stop creating ugly developments that leave people feeling dejected, otherwise it will “build its way into the social problems of the future”.
People thought in the 1960s that the new way forward was to move on from ‘mock Georgian’ housing and instead build concrete skyscrapers. Vibrant communities of terraced housing were replaced by soulless buildings that assaulted the senses and provided people with no sense of living in harmony with their surroundings.
Draconian restrictions thwarted the wishes of people to live in two storey street dwellings with gardens at front and back. Limits on square footage have given the UK the smallest houses in Europe. The fault lies with the Town and Country Planning acts that have prevented people living where they wanted to live in houses they wanted to live in.
The obvious solution is to pull down those monstrosities and build decent homes in their place. The abolition of the Town and Country Planning Acts will aid that along.
This will take time, but there is an interim low-cost solution that will brighten up the dreary drabness with splashes of colour until the obvious solution can be applied.
Think how faceless tower blocks would look with brightly coloured plastic window boxes festooned with flowers under every window. Red, yellow, blue, green. Dirt cheap, and probably donated free by Fisons or ICI. It would transform and humanize the whole building, adding a splash of colour to dull, grey lives.
Those adept at Photoshop should picture those buildings as they would look thus decorated, and residents should be shown the projected results and asked if they wished it done to their own residences. The best guess must be that they would leap at the chance. The UK’s dull drab blocks could become vibrant and human-friendly, invigorating their residents instead of brutalizing them.
Gain not your economics from The Guardian
This seems remarkably muddled:
But the real step the EU can take towards protecting its economy (and with it, its citizens’ wellbeing, optimism and faith in democracy) involves things that are less sexy than building a spaceship, such as finishing the capital markets union that could enable more European tech start-ups to borrow money. The EU has spent the better part of a decade wringing its hands over the absence of European substantial tech companies compared with the US and China. A big reason for this is that it’s simply easier to raise funds in the US because private and public pension funds allocate a greater part of their investments towards venture capital than European pension funds do.
Venture capital isn’t lending money. Therefore you don’t borrow venture capital. The clue’s right there in that second word of the phrase - capital. The writer, Alexander Hurst, should know this:
His memoir, A Stunning Display of Unbelievable Folly, is a modern fable about money and greed; at its center, the story of how he made—and lost—$1.2 million trading “meme stocks” during the chaotic Covid lockdowns of 2020.
But then perhaps the two are in fact connected, not knowing and the performance?
But yes, obviously things get worse:
Europe already exports tech-startup founders to the US rather than keeping them at home – which, according to a US-based French investor – has resulted in French tech in the US being worth far more than French tech in France. For instance, Snowcloud and Datadog, both founded by French entrepreneurs in the US, are many times more valuable than France’s largest unicorns or biggest recent stock market flotation. A situation where the continent is exporting founders, their startups, and the capital that is funding them makes absolutely no sense.
Interesting, perhaps we can find some manner of resolving this conundrum?
This matters because, as Stanford academic and author Mariejte Schaake argues in the FT, we need European tech to embody democratic values. On that front, the EU should feel vindicated that its attempt to regulate disinformation on social media is the correct strategy. ….Whether through enforcement, some new type of regulatory agency or a future ban on X, this is not a fight the EU can back away from because the existence of European democracy itself is at stake.
And there we have it. That Europe is trying to regulate is why the start ups are elsewhere. Europe insists upon regulating using the precautionary principle, it must be shown that there will be no harm before anyone’s actually allowed to do anything. This does not work in fields where - well, it doesn’t work in any field, but - lifecycles are measured in months. This point is not difficult to find. Marc Andreessen, one of the major venture capital investors of our day (note, not lender) has been pointing this out, for free, upon Twitter (or X, to taste).
The Daily Mash did go a little too far insisting that The Guardian is wrong on everything, always. In their economic arguments we do have to admit that the comma placing seems fair enough, often enough.#
Tim Worstall