Just as the quantity theory of money factors in the velocity as well as the supply of money, we might apply the same principle to the housing market. The velocity of housing transactions is notoriously slow.

Could be, could be: Gatwick airport is preparing to reject government demands for it to guarantee that the majority of passengers using its proposed new runway will arrive by train.

Capitalism was not invented. It developed out of the ways in which people deal with each other, and is one of the most benign things that people have done

Hickel writes: What's striking about capitalist civilization is that it has no real direction. There's no vision for social progress, no commitment to improving human welfare or ecology. All we get is the chaos of profit-oriented production and accumulation as the world burns around us.

This is not a proof, this is a musing. But we have a strong feeling that all tax systems tend to their Laffer Curve peak.

We are one week away from the Chancellor’s Spring Statement, which she insists is not an emergency budget (it is).

This is to get the whole point of economics the wrong way around:

Britain must pay its “fair share” into an EU defence fund worth €150 billion if UK arms companies are to benefit from European rearmament, Sir Keir Starmer has been warned.

Miguel Berger, the German ambassador to the UK, told Times Radio that European taxpayers’ money “cannot go simply into British companies”.

As the Labour government debates ways to reduce the spiralling welfare bill, eyeing £5 billion cuts to sickness and disability benefits, it continues to ignore another rapidly soaring component of welfare spending – the state pension.

The government has announced that the price of a passport will rise to £94.50 for adults, up from £88.50. To justify this, the Home Office has said:

“The new fees will help the Home Office to continue to move towards a system that meets its costs through those who use it, reducing reliance on funding from general taxation. The government does not make any profit from the cost of passport applications.”

Apparently, when private equity capitalism goes wrong it’s the consumers that benefit:

Critics of capitalism sometimes suggest that advertising is wasteful, diverting resources into promoting goods that might otherwise be used to lower the price.

This will not be the most intuitively obvious of contentions but you’ll get it once explained. Increasing the cigarette, or tobacco, tax reduces the price of cigarettes or tobacco.