Why we must develop a new energy economy

CONTRARIAN

At long last the sun is out and to celebrate, most newspapers are packing their pages full of summer reading lists. My recommendation this week is Richard Duncan's The New Depression.

He suggests the Austrian squad(free market economists such as Ludwig Von Mises) were right and the last few decades of global growth have largely (though not exclusively) been powered by credit. That credit cycle is now in full retreat and we need to do something fast, although Duncan reckons the solution is not an Austrian-inspired bout of deflationary credit destruction, followed by a Great Depression. Rather in 2012 through to 2015, the US and UK central bank have to pedal like crazy to keep expanding their balance sheets to keep the “credit show” on the road, even while corporates...