Letter: Learn from Smith

Michael Fry, in his valid comments on the inability of modern economists to make any useful predictions (Perspective, 10 August), seems to have written down Adam Smith's ideas.

Modern economists should be required to read Professor Gavin Kennedy's book Adam Smith's Lost Legacy, in which he points out how Smith's ideas have been distorted, more or less since the time they were published.

Smith offered warnings about economic behaviours that resembled most of the events to happen over the last 30 or so years, such as excessive bank profits, lending for spending instead of investing, and reckless prodigal spending, especially by governments. "Every prodigal appears to be a public enemy, and every frugal man a public benefactor". The rate of profit "is always the highest in countries which are going fastest to ruin". There is no need to look to the Austrian school; all that is required is for all politicians, bankers and economists who talk in public about economics to be required to demonstrate, in an exam if necessary, that they have read and understood Adam Smith's writings.

BILL TAYLOR

Tradespark Road

Nairn, Moray