A key part of every child’s syllabus

Monday 1st December 2008, 2:57PM GMT.

From Joseph Labia.
ONE hopes that the Island’s new States Members are well grounded in economics.

Surely, if economics does not now figure in the school syllabus, then it should — to the advantage of both future voters and candidates for public office.

In the light of the above, it is particularly to be hoped that the new Chief Minister will be economically competent.
La Vergée,
Mont Gras d’Eau,
St Brelade.

1
Pip Clement

December 1, 2008 at 3:54 pm

Economics is seldom of interest to the practical politician.
The last British government to take it really seriously was the Conservatives in the early eighties. Sir Keith Joseph was a convert to monetarism and he persuaded Mrs Thatcher that it was a sound basis for running the economy. They happily went from M0 to M10, measures of the money supply, as their primary economic indicator while the economy did its own thing in total defiance of the theory.
You also have to bear in mind that Jersey is not in control of either its currency, in terms of the amount issued or exchange rate, or its interest rates.
Inflation is essentially tied to the UK rate plus a small island spin eg it is fairly consistently a small amount higher than the UK average.
Also the island cannot run sustained deficits on its current account.
So in terms of economics the island is in the same situation as a UK local authority but with tax raising powers, macroeconomic policy is effectively set by the UK.

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2
Nellie Macon

December 2, 2008 at 2:11 pm

Mike Higgins used to teach economics and also produced draft laws for the States – not that they adopted them of course – had they done so we would have had an investor protection scheme which would have been guaranteed by the banks and not our rainy day fund.

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