Utopia, you are standing in it!

Tip O’Neill and the Democratic Century
by John A. Farrell
776 pages
Little, Brown and Company
Published: Mar 2001

Published in 2001, John Farrell’s biography remains the definitive review of Tip O’Neill’s life. Farrell is a former correspondent for The Boston Globe and has written biographies of Clarence Darrow and Richard Nixon (which was a 2018 Pulitzer Prize finalist). Farrell is currently working on a biography of Ted Kennedy which is expected to be published in the fall of 2022.

Tip O’Neill (1912-1994) is a colorful, larger-than-life political figure and anyone interested in his brash, back room style of politics will find much to enjoy in this biography. During O’Neill’s five-decade political career, he served in the Massachusetts House as well as the U.S. House of Representatives (where he ended his career with ten years of service as Speaker).

Farrell invested five years researching his subject’s life and his knowledge…

The Minister of Finance yesterday afternoon finally announced the rest of the members of the new Reserve Bank Board that takes office, under its new authorising legislation yesterday. In my post earlier this week, I highlighted a number of weaknesses in the legislation around the (dis) qualifications of the Governor and other Board members. None of the appointments to the Board appear to be in breach of the Act, but several are questionable on various counts, and taken together (and one should think about the composition of the Board as a whole) the new Board represents a poor, and grossly inadequate, start to the new regime. It could have been a great opportunity for a really impressive fresh start for the governance of the Bank. Instead, the Orr-Robertson degrading of the Bank continues.

As one gets older, rose-tinted glasses about aspects of the past are a risk. I do recall…

Introduction

Law 96 has generated controversy and opposition amongst English-speakers in Quebec and, to a lesser extent, in the rest of Canada when the Legislature of Quebec enacted it last week for its provisions on language.

But it contains one other significant innovation which most of English Canada has overlooked. Through Law 96, the Legislature of Quebec enacted a constitutional amendment under the Section 45 Amending Procedure, which allows provincial legislatures to alter their provincial constitutions, and added two new sections directly to the text of the Constitution Act, 1867 as sections 90.1 and 90.2. Section 90 falls under Part V of the Constitution Act, 1867, the section on “Provincial Constitutions.”

As far as I know, provinces have thus far only impliedly repealed or amended provisions in Part V of the Constitution Act, 1867 through organic statutes without necessarily invoking the Section 45 Amending Procedure by name. But Quebec’s…

Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon has set out the ‘next steps’ in the campaign for Scotland’s independence, including asking the Lord Advocate for Scotland to make a reference to the UK Supreme Court on whether a draft Scottish Independence Referendum Bill relates to ‘reserved matters’ set out in Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act 1998. This reference brings to a head the question whether – without a section 30 order to expressly give the Scottish Parliament such a competence (as was done for the 2014 referendum) – a new independence referendum would have a sound legal basis.

But whereas many may have assumed that if this matter came before the Supreme Court it would do so via Section 33(1) of the 1998 Act once a Referendum Bill had been passed by the Parliament (but before Royal Assent was granted), the vehicle chosen is the wider power contained in paragraph 34…

Today marks the end of an era at the Reserve Bank, as the last of the “Governor as single decisionmaker” model is dismantled, and tomorrow the new Board takes over the primary responsibility for the Bank’s affairs. The single decisionmaker model was an experiment, but with time it was increasingly apparent that it was a poor one, increasingly unfit for purpose. No other country reforming its central banking and bank etc regulatory arrangements followed us. It is to the government’s credit that they have moved the governance model for the Reserve Bank back towards the international mainstream (even if the specifics of the 2018 and 2021 are less than ideal, and in some respect a dog’s breakfast).

(NB note that most of the new Board, to take up office tomorrow, has not yet been appointed – or at least announced. With the new Board reportedly supposed to be meeting tomorrow…

What’s the most depressing chart in the world?

If you believe in limited government and you’re looking back in time, this example or this example are good candidates.

But if we’re looking into the future, this chart from a new study by the European Central Bank is very sobering.

And it’s a depressing chart because it doesn’t matter whether you believe in big government or small government. That’s because this chart shows a dramatic shift in population demographics.

Simply stated, Europe’s welfare states are in deep trouble because over time there will be fewer and fewer workers to pay taxes and more and more old people expecting benefits.

Here’s what the ECB experts, Katalin Bodnár and Carolin Nerlich, wrote about their findings.

The euro area, like many other advanced economies, has entered an era of drastic demographic change. …Declining birth rates and rising life expectancy are causing the number of…