Letters: Just how should you pronounce vermouth?
Down to zero Sir: Paul Collier’s siren call to take advantage of near-zero interest rates to go on a massive government infrastructure splurge is one Jeremy Corbyn might welcome but Conservatives should resist (‘Back to Plan A+’, 16 November). Japan tried what he is proposing when its bubble burst in 1990. The result: $6.3 trillion debt and two wasted decades. As Harvard’s Edward Glaeser has noted: ‘No one can look at the Japanese numbers and conclude that the money has ramped up the growth rate.’ Apart from anything else, politicians are poor allocators of capital. In a 2009 paper, ‘Survival of the unfittest’, Bent Flyvbjerg, professor of major infrastructure projects at Oxford University,