Sometimes the reforming radicals are those
who also seek to conserve.

My Cobden Centre and Cobden Partners colleague Gordon Kerr appeared this morning on Bloomberg to explain why the Greek bailout will fail:

As I have said in debate, in the context of using the IMF to facilitate bailouts:

…If this is not the time of all times to question the fundamental basis of our financial system, I do not know when we ever shall. …

To conclude, we are in danger of simply kicking a can down the road and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton said, ladling water into the boat. We are looking at further credit expansion, further monetisation of debts and further socialisation of risk. Throughout the western world, we are in danger of appearing as King Canute, trying to use politics to hold back the realities of social co-operation, which we usually describe as economics. The IMF is an institutional legacy from a monetary system that failed 40 years ago, and the successor to which is even now failing as well.

We live in a time of immense forces at work in the world: huge bailouts of nation states, “quantitative easing” and extensive intervention in credit markets. Where it leads remains to be seen but I believe we will need rather more imaginative thought about the financial system before this episode in our history is over.

A reading list for rethinking economics is here and a primer is here.

Every week over 26 weeks, I’ll be publishing a précis of a chapter of Henry Hazlitt’s brilliant 1946 book, Economics in One Lesson, prepared by Michael Dowsett during his internship. The index page is here.

This week, The Curse of Machinery, which destroys the luddite fallacy that mechanisation makes us all poorer. For example, from the original:

Among the most viable of all economic delusions is the belief that machines on net balance create unemployment. Destroyed a thousand times, it has risen a thousand times out of its own ashes as hardy and vigorous as ever. Whenever there is long-continued mass unemployment, machines get the blame anew. This fallacy is still the basis of many labor union practices. The public tolerates these practices because it either believes at bottom that the unions are right, or is too confused to see just why they are wrong.

The belief that machines cause unemployment, when held with any logical consistency, leads to preposterous conclusions. Not only must we be causing unemployment with every technological improvement we make today, but primitive man must have started causing it with the first efforts he made to save himself from needless toil and sweat.

Buy or download Economics in One Lesson.

This evening, I made the following presentation on the Government’s financial position and intentions and on the genesis of this crisis. The PDF is here: How to create a crisis.

Last month, I put down a written Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Transport, asking for the remit and cost of the consultants involved in the High Speed Two project. You can read my question and the answer in Hansard here and the text is below.

As you can see, these costs have already run to over £25 million…

Steve Baker:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport which consultants are being or have been used on the High Speed 2 project; and what the (a) remit and (b) cost to the public purse was of their services in each case.

Justine Greening:

The following table provides information on the consultants used by both HS2 Ltd and the Department for Transport since the inception of HS2 Ltd in 2009 to present. It also gives information on their remit and associated costs.

Company	Remit	Costs (£)
ALOGIT	Technical services	23,184.00
DbyD: Consultation Institute	Consultation	23,760.00
Arup	Engineering and technical services	7,155,687.35
Atkins	Economic services	2,053,812.96
Bircham Dyson Bell	Legal services	117,013.52
Bombardier: Min Headway Eval	Engineering and technical services	24,000.00
Booz and Company	Environmental and economic services	3,550,744.07
Campbell Associates	Environmental services	37,473.26
CB Richard Ellis	Property services	280,606.59
CCH Wolters Kluwer (UK) LTD	Taxation services	504.00
Davis Langdon	Cost and risk services	26,569.60
DG Consultant	Transport services	17,500.00
Senior Ecologist—ELM Environment	Environmental services	10,027.74
Energy Strategy	Engineering services	2,160.00
Ernst & Young LLP	Financial services	410,888.90
Eversheds LLP	Legal services	233,499.89
Hay Group Management Limited	HR services	53,987.36
Transport Studies Unit	Transport services	48,135.60
Landmark Chambers	Legal services	13,800.00
Mott Macdonald	Engineering services	4,412,654.42
MSG	Engineering services	154,904.91
MVA	Economic services	3,276,661.48
Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd	Environmental/transport services	7,632.51
Oliver Wyman Consulting Limited	Strategy consultancy	107,497.73
Paul Jenkins Associates Ltd	Engineering services	22,696.18
Rand Europe	Economic services	19,986.80
Reg Harman Consultancy	Environmental services	783.30
Rowsell Wright	Procurement services	257,976.00
URS/Scott Wilson	Economic services	14,652.00
Stoneywood Consultants	Organisation/procurement services	59,001.59
Systra	Operational services	82,500.00
Temple Ltd	Environmental services	3,209,557.60
Thornton Springer	Taxation/payroll advice	1,842.00
UKPNS Traction	Environmental services	111,430.95

That seems good money for a project that would never attract voluntary support and for those who, far from inheriting the mantle of the Victorian railway pioneers who risked private capital, rely on the taxpayer. It is a metaphor for the transformation of our society from one based on free enterprise to one dependent on state power and the essentially arbitrary decisions of politicians and officials.

Via powerlineblog.com:

For another US perspective see LearnLiberty.org and Stop Spending Our Future plus these posts.