While I was away, the economist Daniel Davies launched an interesting weblog, D-squared Digest. I like his opening gambit: “Lots of people are providing intelligent economic comment. But nobody’s providing actively stupid ideas, supported by tendentious economic reasoning. Well, nobody except the Cato Institute, Eric Raymond, and more or less everybody when you come to think about it. Anyway, this is my site motto: ‘Going to the edge of lunacy, and staying there’.”
Today he offers some thoughts on whether Britain should join the European single currency. His conclusion? “The official position of D-squaredDigest is that Europe should adopt the pound sterling as its single currency.”
On one aspect of the single currency debate he is surely right. The high-profile supporters on both sides of the issue are a pretty unappealing lot. Today’s Financial Times has a half page of “big names” lined up for the “euro battle” (not available, as far as I could discover, online even though I subscribe to FT.com — don’t get me started on everything that’s wrong with FT.com). On balance, however, the no campaigners have the more unappetising list — would you want to be a member of a club that included Marco Pierre White, Bob Geldof, Baroness Thatcher and Tony Parsons?