Daily Archives: September 27, 2011


Old fashioned economic stimulus has a new name for the twenty-first century. Concepts such as Keynesianism, state intervention and pump priming have been replaced by quantitative easing. According to Bob McTeer, quantitative easing is “different from traditional monetary policy only in its magnitude and pre-announcement of amount and timing.” And if we accept quantitative easing is not so very far removed from traditional monetary policy, it […]

A stimulating proposition


Electrocute means, and only means, to put to death by means of a powerful electric current. It should not be used for a mere electric shock. This was a distinction I hadn’t full appreciated until reading Mind the Gaffe – something of a pedant’s handbook. Its first recorded use in English was on 7 June 1889 when New Jersey’s Trenton Times described how a prisoner had […]

Shocking vocabulary