The Dividing Line Between Wish And Need

Economists, Like Royal Children, Are Not Punished For Their Errors.

Cause And Effect, The Riddle Of All History, Is A Particular Devil In Financial History; And Never More So Than Today, Where Entire Classes Of Security Are Collapsing Not On Public Exchanges And Stock-tickers But Because There Are No Markets To Establish Prices This Side Of Nothing.

The Rise To Prominence Of The Saudi Novel In Arabic Is The Great Man-bites-dog Of Recent World Literature. Saudi Arabia Is A Country Without A Free Press, Where European Styles And Forms Are Distrusted And Where The Female Half Of The Population Became Literate Only In This Generation.

Life Without Oil, In Fact, Would Be So Different That It Is Frightening To Contemplate. We Are Addicted, And It Is No Comfortable Addiction.

For 50 Years, Nuclear Power Stations Have Produced Three Products Which Only A Lunatic Could Want: Bomb-explosive Plutonium, Lethal Radioactive Waste And Electricity So Dear It Has To Be Heavily Subsidised. They Leave To Future Generations The Task, And Most Of The Cost, Of Making Safe Sites That Have Been Polluted Half-way To Eternity.