Let them eat Fish ’n’ Chips

Banker-bashing was a favorite sport in London for many years. Every day you could read stories in the papers about arrogant bankers, who were driving prices of rents (and everything else) up and “original” Londoners out of the city. Bankers definitely deserved higher taxes…

After Armageddon struck last summer, a recession is not far and bankers are leaving London by the thousands. Given that the London GDP comes mostly from financial services, fewer bankers means a substantially lower demand in the city. And this will not stop in lower rents. Fewer bankers means less money for everything, from tax revenues to cabs. Shops that were counting on symbiosis (or parasitism) with the detested fat cats, will now suffer. High margin quality food (even in supermarkets like M&S) is no longer a good idea. Well, “original” Londoners will be back soon to reclaim their territory, let them eat fish’n’chips.

Green Conservatism - Πράσινος Φιλελευθερισμός

I just saw this excellent video with a speech by Newt Gingrich, where he defines and makes a case for "green conservatism", where market forces will be used to save the environment. He also shows how catastrophic the leftist activism can be for the environment, by giving the example of the anti-nuclear energy movement (Jane Fonda et al.) in the early 80's: If nuclear energy had been adopted in US at the same level as it had in France, emitted carbon would have been reduced by more than 2 billion tonnes by now, number much higher than the cuts proposed in Kyoto Treaty for US.

I do not however want to underplay the irresponsible position (at least until recently) of the American right that tends to react so emotionally to whatever "the other side" is saying. More on that, here

Krugman - The tax-and-spend liberal that I read

Here is his interesting latest NYT piece on commodity prices. (Note the payback to The Economist in the beginning)