Freddie Mercury

Friday, September 2, 2011

A Baby Rolls Grows

Luxury giant Rolls-Royce has big plans for its ‘entry-level’ limo, the Ghost, including a Coupe and Drophead cabrio. But for now, it’s launched this stretched version.

The new Ghost Extended Wheelbase, or EWB, is a six inches longer than the standard car and gets twice as much rear legroom. Even with the front seats in their rearmost position, there’s extra leg space in the back, so the tallest passengers can stretch out in comfort. And the sense of room is further enhanced by the standard panoramic sunroof.

Although the EWB debuted at April’s Shanghai Motor Show, and is aimed at Asian markets – where length of stretch reflects passenger status – it retains the Ghost’s focus as the driver’s Rolls. Every effort has been made to ensure that the extra bodywork and weight haven’t affected the experience; the idea is that the chauffeur hands back the keys at the weekend so the owner can have some fun behind the wheel. Rolls claims this is an increasingly popular usage pattern in Asia.

Regardless of who is driving, the new model is an elegant piece of work. No changes have been made to the drivetrain or chassis, so it’s the same mighty 563bhp 6.6-litre V12 powering the rear wheels through an eight-speed auto, plus air-suspension with electronically adaptive damping.

Okay, you don’t get the same uncanny sense of isolation from the outside world as in the bigger Phantom, but maybe that’s a good thing. There’s a little more road noise and tire thump, plus greater steering feel – all the better to exploit the unlikely acceleration (0-62mph takes 4.9 seconds) and the surprising tenacity and control of the chassis through corners.

As long as you keep things neat and smooth at the wheel, the Ghost EWB will respond in kind. All gain and no pain, then – just as Rolls-Royce intended.

--AutoExpress

The Keynes Vs. Hayek Rematch

Hayek’s apotheosis came in the 1980’s, when British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took to quoting from The Road to Serfdom (1944), his classic attack on central planning. But while Hayek’s defense of the market system against the gross inefficiency of central planning won increasing assent, Keynes’s view that market systems require continuous stabilization lingered on in finance ministries and central banks.

Both traditions, though, were later eclipsed by the Chicago school of “rational expectations,” which has dominated mainstream economics for the last twenty-five years (Milton Friedman, anyone?). With economic agents supposedly possessing perfect information about all possible contingencies, systemic crises could never happen except as a result of accidents and surprises beyond the reach of economic theory.

The global economic collapse of 2008 discredited “rational expectations” economics model, and has since brought both Keynes and Hayek back into posthumous contention. The issues have not changed much since their argument began in the Great Depression of the 1930’s. What causes market economies to collapse? What is the right response to a collapse? What is the best way to prevent future collapses? READ: The Austrians Have it Right

For Hayek in the early 1930’s, and for Hayek’s followers today, the “crisis” results from over-investment relative to the supply of savings, made possible by excessive credit expansion. Banks lend at lower interest rates than genuine savers would have demanded, making all kinds of investment projects temporarily profitable.

Every artificial boom thus carries the seeds of its own destruction. Recovery consists of liquidating the misallocations, reducing consumption, and increasing saving.

--Project Syndicate