Ed Balls designs an Anti Ed Balls style education strategy.

'Flabbergasted' does not do this justice.  There seems to be a cross-party consensus that centralised control of education is not the answer:

"Earlier this month, Balls told a conference of headteachers: "I think the right thing for us to do now is to move away from what has historically been a rather central view of school improvement through national strategies, to something which is essentially being commissioned not from the centre, but by schools themselves."

Michael Gove, the shadow education secretary, said: "If Ed Balls is going to scrap the national strategies in their current form, we will support him. They cost a fortune and do not drive up standards. We want to give teachers more responsibility."

Mystery of the day: what can you spend 50p on that is so embarassing, perverted or wrong that you redact every detail of it but the cost? Ask Phyllis Starkey MP.  HatTip to "TaxTrust", who got it from Dizzy. 

Some great news: Independent Financial Advisors will be decimated by enforced changes to how the swine charge you for poor advice. 

Alan Greenspan is always worth reading.  I would have been much happier to hear that he was planning to go into teaching than Gordon. His emphasis on equity prices is unusual; his fear of inflation is possibly too much, the 'inflation by immaculate conception' that Philip Stephens refers to (in an article that makes those of us in favour of international macroeconomic cooperation still more gloomy).  But to read him is always a useful lesson.

Our housing market is stronger than the US's. This is one reason not to follow Greenspan in worrying about its effect on future growth.  We don't build houses, you see: a cunning way of dealing with the problem. 

Dillow is beautifully provocative: why ask people whether the current state of affairs is just?

"there’s no reason to suppose that public opinion about justice should coincide with what is actually just. After all, if it did we could ditch 2500 years of political philosophy and use opinion polls instead. "

You may find this article by Sam Brittan difficult to understand, because the graph has not made it online.  If this is correct, then things might go far better than people realise.

"We should not rush too soon to base policy on an assumption that trend output has shifted downwards."

Let's hope, because if trend output has NOT shifted downwards, we can grow at 3.5% for a decade without overheating.  Which would be NICE. 

The BOE's semi-annual piece on Financial Stability always attracts interest.  I have not read it yet - amazing, given it is only 3mb.  Thank goodness, Norma Cohen has already summarised it. As the FT's leader makes clear, what needs doing is less controversial than by whom. 

Scott Sumner is a very monetarist thinker and totally fearless in assaulting the prejudices of his liberal opponents. I find his monetarism rather idealistic and impractical - even if the whole slump could be dealt with by unorthodox money ideas, pragramatism dictates that you try everything.  And I still have no idea how an NGDP target will somehow make the real economy confident.  This piece of his savages Woodrow Wilson, Keynes (grrr) and the very invention of the Fed in 1913.

Why stop at Buy American?  Buy Oklahoman.