“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.”  Joan Robinson

This blog is about how the economy in our society and our world works.
My aim is to write this in a way that anyone would understand and that even my wife will find interesting.

  • Why are so many people in my country (the UK) struggling to find decent work, at decent pay, with decent conditions?
  • Why are so many public services on the point of collapse through lack of funding?
  • And this all coming from a financial crash nearly 10 years ago – why has the economy still not recovered?
  • And yet, we’re the rich ones! Why are we so rich and the rest of the world so poor?

Each week I’m going to post a short entry (about 500 words), building up into a picture that will enable anyone to answer these questions.
It won’t be (too) difficult. It won’t be (overly) complicated. And it will be interesting. That’s the challenge I’m setting myself, anyway.

Well, the text above is what I wrote when I started the blog in February 2017.  The reality turned out a bit different – I discovered that I couldn’t write about the economy in a way that is concise and accessible.  It’s just too complicated.  

But if you want to explore what I had to say, I recommend starting with the two concluding posts.  

If that sparks your interest, the final section of the blog, “Political Economy”, is probably the most accessible.  Start reading here and use the blue arrow on the right to move to the next post.  

The blog is divided into 7 different sections, accessed from the menu bar above, with 97 posts in total.  The Overview gives a brief introduction into what each section is about, and then there’s a lengthy description of each section, with links to individual posts.  It’s one way to find out what’s here and jump straight to posts that interest you.

For a bit more of an introduction, see my first post here.
For a bit more background, see About.

If you read the final post, you’ll notice that it highlights the areas of further study I wanted to pursue at that time.  And that’s what I’ve been doing since June 2020.  There’s a massive amount more I could say now, particularly about how the international monetary and financial system works and the political and economic implications of this, but I have no intention of adding to the blog.  If you want to know about “US dollar hegemony”, “dominant currency paradigm”, “the global financial cycle” and “monetary policy spillovers”, message me and I’ll tell you what I’ve discovered in the published research.