Buttonwood's notebook

WHY has economic growth been so sluggish in the developed world? The previous post showed that productivity in the global economy had been flat or falling in the last three years. And it suggested that the existence of "zombie" firms—uncompetitive survivors—might be one explanation.

WORK smarter, not harder. It is one of the more irritating things that a boss can tell you. But at the macroeconomic level, it is important.

MORE than ten years have elapsed since Alan Greenspan stepped down from the Federal Reserve; a decade that has not been kind to his reputation. Having just read Sebastian Mallaby's comprehensive biography*, "The Man Who Knew", it struck me that his career was a classic example of cognitive dissonance.

INDUSTRIAL policy via Twitter is a new development in economics but we may all have to get used to it over the next four (or eight) years. Donald Trump's tweets on the car industry (and his planned cuts to corporate income tax) may or may not have persuaded Ford to keep a plant in Michigan, creating 700 jobs.

DOROTHY was unhappy. Life on the Kansas farm seemed dull, and her pocket money hadn’t risen in real terms for years. It was time for a change; time to make Kansas great again. Then, as she was sitting in the farmhouse with her dog Toto, a tornado came along, sweeping them up and taking her away, far from reality.

SOME time soon, the Dow Jones Industrial Average seems likely to break through the 20,000 barrier, an event that will be greeted with banner headlines and a sign that capitalism is flourishing again. In fact, the Dow is a flawed measure, which uses the odd approach of weighting its component companies by share price.

AS THE parade of billionaires and generals joins Donald Trump's cabinet, it is hard not to be reminded of the Roman republic.

SOMETIMES an analogy strikes you on the head with the force of a plummeting cricket ball. On Radio 4 yesterday, Hamish Johnson, editor of physicsworld.com, had the brilliant insight to explain the British government’s policy in terms of physics; Schrödinger’s Brexit.

TRADE has changed a lot in the last 25 years. Indeed, we are still struggling to understand why trade growth was so rapid before the 2008 crisis, and has been relatively sluggish since.

CENTRAL bankers are under fire.

POLITICIANS campaign in soundbites but reality deals in awkward paragraphs. For all the sloganeering (Brexit means Brexit) and the prevarication, the British government must finally decide what kind of trade-offs it is willing to accept when it leaves the European Union.

CONVENTIONAL wisdom gets turned on its head quickly in the financial markets. Although many on Wall Street were gloomy about the prospects under a Trump presidency, the markets have performed a sharp U-turn after the overnight decline on election day.

FINANCIAL markets went into the election night both favouring and expecting a Clinton victory. And the early results seemed to point to success for the Democrat candidate. But as the night wore on, Donald Trump's position steadily improved and investors started to lose their nerve.

GAMBLERS seem to think Donald Trump is a 3-1 outsider to win the election on Tuesday. The Predictit market has Hillary Clinton on 77% (where 100% is certainty). But what does that really tell us? On June 21, two days before the British referendum on the EU, Betfair was implying odds of 75% for Remain and 25% for Leave.