I’m not a practising economist, but I did read an economics course at university, along with psychology. Because of it, I’m probably slightly better equipped to understand what’s going on now than the average Jo(e).

The word “slightly” is important here because it means just what it says.

The difference between books on standard economics and what goes on at the windows in Central Banks is enormous, especially as the “windows” aren’t windows at all.

When you also take into account modern investment banks — what we used to call merchant banks when we British were British and not Americans — the difference becomes profounder still.

The business of moving money around has become so arcane and global that hardly anyone understands it now, not even bankers, and especially not politicians. This means we can either attempt to follow the bizarre mathematical models of Harvard MBAs and, if tales are to be believed, rocket scientists from NASA, or we fall back on practical psychology to make sense of it. That’s what I do.

This leads directly both to my successes in forecasting and my failures. Looking back I detect, from a low base of hands-on experience, that I’ve done about as well as the average expert commentator, and occasionally much better — Anatole Kaletsky leaps to mind.

How much will you pay for my method? Here it is free of charge:

Do not trust Gordon Brown to get anything right from the medium short-term going forward.

That is my Golden Rule. It produces tier upon tier of successful forecasting.

Distrust any proposal that would lower the democratic input into policy.

It’s not that democratic decisionmaking is necessarily superior to any other, just that non-democratic forces are often catastrophically wrong, and usually pernicious in their effects.

The more global they are, the less competent they become. This accords with the principles of Superdemocracy.

Beware those who persistently use the word “global”.

These strange beings fantasise themselves as rulers of the world. I’m convinced Gordon Brown dreams of those old Soviet posters of Lenin being carried into Moscow beneath a huge red flag. Archetypes of the Great Leader are never to be trusted or encouraged.

Does anyone know if Brown has Photoshop on his computer?

Stick with minimum, obvious solutions in economics.

Confronting someone in a car accident, with blood pouring from an artery, you wouldn’t offer them an iron tablet. Neither would you send for an aromatherapist, however fashionable. The poor chap needs the medical equivalent of Joe the Plumber to deal with a major overflow problem. Monetarists are financial plumbers, the emergency services.

Keynesians, and others who prefer not to bear any label, are the naturopaths of economics. They should only enter the arena to deal with delicate matters like balancing supply and demand and use deficit financing sparingly over a cycle. A scented candle here, a relaxing massage there.

Used sensitively, as they should, these arms of political economy can be made to produce a “cocktail of measures”, as Kenneth Clarke described it from the stage of the Ken and Eddie Show — an entertainment that is, alas, no longer with us.

Treat anything emanating from Brussels as you would a red-hot brick.

This is built on decades of experience and is not disputed by anyone who can see further than the end of their street. Unfortunately, that does not include most politicians.

Services run by the public sector cost twice as much in the end as private provision.

The old saying that a pound in your pocket loses half its value when it lands in the government’s bank account, probably underestimates the losses in Labour’s public sector. Many of these costs are disguised as something else, or appear off balance sheet.

View all opinions from international regulatory bodies as suspect.

This is the Holy Grail for us Democratic Minimalists. International and supranational sherpas are rootless individuals holding no philosophy other than seizing the agendas of national and local democratic forces, whom they regard as village idiots. Always stick with the idiots — at least you can understand them, and whip them when they’re wrong.

So there you have it. My methodology. If in future I get anything wrong, you will at least know I have the best of intentions and no ambitions to rule the world.

Are you listening, Gordon?

John Evans

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