A true spending review does not feel like strategy at first. It feels like a bright light switched on in a room where everyone had learned to live with the …
Few fiscal rituals are as theatrical and as economically absurd as the debt ceiling. It arrives with the mood of a final showdown, stern speeches, countdown graphics, market nerves, patriotic …
Modern tax systems are haunted by movement. Capital moves. Profits move. Firms move paper faster than goods. Wealth changes costume. Labor becomes more mobile in some places and more informal …
Oil has a way of humiliating budget plans. It turns elegant forecasts into damp paper and makes confident ministers sound like men reading vows during an earthquake. One month the …
Fiscal rules are the kind of institution people praise in peacetime and resent in storms. They sound tidy on paper, debt anchors, deficit ceilings, expenditure paths, escape clauses. They promise …
Some fiscal deceptions wear tuxedos. They do not smash windows or shout lies into microphones. They glide into public finance with elegant labels, special vehicles, extraordinary facilities, tax expenditures, guarantees, …
The old peace dividend now feels like a relic from a museum gift shop, tasteful, optimistic, and no longer priced for the world outside. Across many countries, defense has moved …
At first the change looks gentle. A little more silver hair on trains. A few longer queues at clinics. Pension debates pushed one notch higher on the evening agenda. Then …
Election season has a smell. Part warm paper, part fresh paint, part borrowed confidence. Promises come dressed as compassion, tax cuts arrive wrapped in patriotism, and spending plans are presented …
A strange faith has returned to modern government. It walks into cabinet rooms wearing the costume of national renewal, talks like strategy, and glows with the promise of jobs, factories, …