Warwick Lightfoot's Substack

Warwick Lightfoot's Substack

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Financial Markets

Government debt is not the UK’s economic problem. The problem is government spending.
The British Government will not be forced to go to IMF to be bailed out - that is yesterday’s story when currencies were fixed against the dollar in a…
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Warwick Lightfoot
Mathematics and Economics or Black Magic and Alchemy?
Economic data is complex, not reliable for causation. Economists should heed Romer’s Mathiness warnings and Keynes, Friedman on statistical alchemy.
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Warwick Lightfoot
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US Capital Account and International Finance
US economy has it all: modern productive services, science, and technology, capacity to mobilise the savings of the world to finance its investment, and…
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Warwick Lightfoot
Trump Administration’s Tariff Policy and the case for Unilateral Free Trade
Countries should embrace Ricardo’s Comparative Advantage, open markets, remove tariffs and impediments to trade, give effect to their self interest…
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Warwick Lightfoot
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Industrial Revolution, inventing Political Economy, relative 20th century British economic decline and the creation of a modern…
It made Victorian Britain egregiously rich, but its costs stimulated a political antithesis that provoked a generation of socialist policies and a…
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Warwick Lightfoot
UK’s Spring Economic Statement focuses on Redundant Fiscal Rules, Neglecting falling Productivity, Profits, the falling Rate of Return on…
UK has supply-side problems arising from high public spending, taxation and labour market regulation that deliver weak productivity and falling profits
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Warwick Lightfoot
Kaput: German and European Economic Institutions set up for economic success sixty years ago are now in a Structural Slump
Germany’s economic miracle ended years ago, Germany and Europe’s Mercantilism, Rigid Fiscal Rules and resistance to technology need to go
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Warwick Lightfoot
Modern India: A Great Power, a rapidly expanding economy that hosts the world’s third largest equity market
Sovereign Socialist Republic of India, more powerful than the Mughal Empire possessing an economy with dynamism to match.
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Warwick Lightfoot
Challenge of over expanded public sectors: in the UK, Europe and North America
Elevated public expenditure crowding out private sector growth, is a problem in advanced OECD economies, the UK offers an egregious example, the EU…
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Warwick Lightfoot
Labour’s share of national income rises in the UK, while profitability falls
Unlike other economies wages as a share of GDP have risen in the UK since the mid-1990s, while profits have fallen, reflecting a flexible labour market…
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Warwick Lightfoot
What should financial markets make of a second Trump administration: return to President Ronald Reagan’s War Keynesianism?
Economic modelling of President Trump's tariffs as exercises in hyperbole, big geopolitical issue is rearmament led by US, financed by debt, with…
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Warwick Lightfoot
As the UK Labour Market Becomes Less Flexible and Efficient, is the Minimum Wage Lowering Productivity Growth?
UK labour market is becoming more regulated, minimum wage regulation is compress pay differentials and a Manhattan Skyline of marginal tax rates damages…
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Warwick Lightfoot
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