Burger or Lobster?

There is a restaurant (or indeed several) in London, called Burger & Lobster. There is no menu. Instead your server asks whether you would like to eat (yes, you guessed), a burger or a lobster, which are both the same price. Of course, there are many further permutations, would you like cheese...

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If everyone is expecting QE, what next?

The size of the recent move in EUR/CHF after the removal of the floor, was clearly of a magnitude much larger than the market has observed recently. We can of course debate whether this was the largest daily move on record. However, whilst the timing of the removal of the floor was a surprise, the...

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A short story - Snapping fingers

I have been writing a novel over the past few years, which is very loosely based on thirty snapshots of real events in the Arab World over the past sixty years, told by different fictional narrators. It is a book I shall probably never finish. I had written this chapter below over a year ago, about a fictional event where a cartoonist is punished for a satirical cartoon (this scene is loosely based...

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Are you being "Piketty" about other economists?

I recently wrote an article discussing the "Unusual cult of deriding economists". As the title suggests, I talked about the derision economists can often receive from outside their community, as illustrated by a quick peek Twitter. I argued that criticism of economists is justified, when it...

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The Unusual Cult of Deriding Economists

The Internet has its way of amplifying opinion. Praise spreads like a whisper, whilst criticism is amplified like a rabbit overdosing on crack. As a group, economists come in for seemingly relentless derision on the Internet, most notably on Twitter. I am all for free speech, that is after all the power of the Internet, an amalgam of different opinions, which coalesce to give you a snapshot of the...

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