Niall Ferguson

We have fallen into the trap of believing that very, very complex laws addressing every conceivable contingency are good. But,in fact, common-law systems in England and in North America were once highly conducive to economic innovation because they adapted, they were evolutionary rather than prescriptive. We have slipped into what I call codification mania, a very dangerous road to go down, leading to the rule of law being replaced by the rule of lawyers because the rules are no longer transparent or simple, nor is access to justice relatively easy. Show less «

I'm not sure there's anything 'triumphalist' about the writing I've done. There are people who like to pretend that I am a neo-conservative triumphalist, which I never was. They just never bothered to read my books because it's much easier just to make these things up. Show less «

It's clear that the most important issue in China is not should they have elections, which seems a long way off, but should the Communist Party be subject to an independent judiciary, which it currently isn't. That's the big question that remains to be solved there, and it will be resolved pretty soon. We should recognize what are the really important institutional changes and not kid ourselves that if you hold elections in, say, Egypt, everything's going to be fine. Show less «

Under democracy, the young and unborn are always disenfranchised and it doesn't really matter whether there are lots of them or relatively few of them. What we've seen post-1945 is that they are potential victims of a consistent policy that postpones payment, championed by politicians who desperately want the cost of whatever they do to be borne by future generations. It boils down to intergenerational inequity. We should just start accounting honestly for public finances instead of using these dodgy conventions that any company could be convicted of fraud for using. Start looking at governments in the way that we look at companies and ask, 'Where's the balance sheet? What are the liabilities? What are the assets? What is the time horizon beyond ten years?' Show less «

When I'm trying to cheer myself up about the prospect of, say, Afghanistan, I remind myself that Scotland was the Afghanistan of 17th century Europe - warring mountain tribesmen and religious zealots in the lowlands, and one-hundred years later you have the Scottish Enlightenment. Show less «

[on 'why there is no longer a penalty for reckless mistakes and negligence'] This is puzzling thing, and I think it's one of the unintended consequences of regulatory pathology. If you create these enormous edifices of regulation, as well as choking growth, you make it so all people have to do to stay out of jail is to be compliant. They don't necessarily have to do the right thing, they just have to be able to say, 'We complied with the regulations', and then if there's any further issue there's a civil suit and you pay your $100-million fine and carry on - which was the case in more than a few instances during the financial crisis. There's no discretion for a supervisory authority to say, 'Thia is a bad guy, we're going to revoke his licence', or even send him to jail. Show less «