Tim Congdon

‘The Brexit shambles could have been largely avoided if there had been from June 2016 a government which — unlike Theresa May’s — was 100 per committed to taking Britain out of the EU’

‘Russia is governed by semi-deranged confidence men who dupe their fellow citizens into believing in their nation’s geopolitical greatness’

‘If it were true that “isolation costs jobs, costs growth, costs people’s livelihood”, New Zealand ought to be the poorest nation on the planet, and Australia shouldn’t be far behind’

“Alan Greenspan was a good Fed chairman, but his reputation was grossly over-inflated”

‘If contractionary fiscal policy can be expansionary, could expansionary fiscal policy be contractionary?’

‘Adam Smith observed, “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” There is certainly a great deal more potential ruin in the government bond markets’

‘Theory says that unilateral moves to trade liberalisation ought to benefit countries going down that path. Practice shows that the theory works — free trade is good for the nation that adopts it’

‘Trump’s fiscal largesse will expand the US’s external deficits at just the same time that the tariff increases are supposed to be reducing them’

The ECB chairman quits next year after an impressive eight-year term. But as money growth slows to a halt, troubled times lie ahead 

‘How many bureaucrats does it take to change a light bulb — or does it depend on whether they work in Brussels or Westminster?’