Timothy George Congdon

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(born 28 April 1951) is a British

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are ...

Early life

He was educated at

Colchester Royal Grammar School Colchester Royal Grammar School (CRGS) is a state-funded grammar school in Colchester, Essex. It was founded in 1128 and was later granted two royal charters - by Henry VIII in 1539 and by Elizabeth I in 1584.Trevor J. Hearn, ''Vitae Corona Fide ...

and St. John's and Nuffield colleges at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

Career

Over the years, he has accumulated a long record of commenting on public policy issues, including writing sympathetically about (and deploying in his own analysis) the monetarist approach to

macroeconomic policy Macroeconomics (from the Greek prefix ''makro-'' meaning "large" + ''economics'') is a branch of economics dealing with performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. For example, using interest rates, taxes, and ...

. He has considerable experience working in the

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...

and was the founder of the macroeconomic forecasting consultancy Lombard Street Research. Between 1993 and 1997 he was a member of the Treasury Panel that advised the Conservative government on economic policy, sometimes referred to as the "wise men". Since May 2008, he has been the economic correspondent for '' Standpoint'' magazine. He set up the economic advisory group International Monetary Research Ltd. in 2009; it applies Congdon's monetarist approach. In January 2011 Congdon became the Honorary Chairman of

The Freedom Association The Freedom Association (TFA) is a pressure group in the United Kingdom that describes itself as "a non-partisan, classically liberal campaign group, which has links to the Conservative Party and UK Independence Party (UKIP). TFA was founded in ...

. He is on the Advisory Council of the

Reform Reform ( lat, reformo) means the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc. The use of the word in this way emerges in the late 18th century and is believed to originate from Christopher Wyvill's Association movement ...

think tank.

Northern Rock bail-out

Congdon was a prominent defender of the UK Government's action to lend to

Northern Rock Northern Rock, formerly the Northern Rock Building Society, was a British bank. Based at Regent Centre in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, Northern Rock was originally a building society. It demutualised and became Northern Rock bank i ...

, arguing that it was quite likely to make money for the government. He is a small shareholder in Northern Rock, a fact that he has disclosed publicly when writing on this issue.

Politics

Congdon stood as

UK Independence Party The UK Independence Party (UKIP; ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of Parliament and was the largest par ...

candidate for the

Forest of Dean The Forest of Dean is a geographical, historical and cultural region in the western part of the county of Gloucestershire, England. It forms a roughly triangular plateau bounded by the River Wye to the west and northwest, Herefordshire to ...

constituency in the 2010 General Election, obtaining 5.2% of the votes cast and saving his deposit. In October 2010 he stood unsuccessfully for the leadership of the party. In 2014 he stood down as UKIP's economic spokesman after being called a "hypocrite" for agreeing to have

wind turbine A wind turbine is a device that converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. Hundreds of thousands of large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, now generate over 650 gigawatts of power, with 60 GW added each yea ...

s installed on his property in Scotland, going against the party's policy on renewable energy. In 2015 he was replaced as the UKIP candidate for Forest of Dean by Steve Stanbury. Congdon supported Britain's exit from the European Union in the UK's 2016 EU referendum.

Books

*''Basic Economics: A Dictionary of Terms, Concepts, and Ideas'' (London: Arrow Books, 1976, with

Douglas McWilliams Douglas Francis McWilliams (born 1951) is a British economic consultant, specializing in forecasting and the technology sector. After holding senior positions with IBM and the Confederation of British Industry, in 1992 he won a ''Sunday Times'' ...

)

References

External links

International Monetary Research Ltd.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Congdon, Tim 1951 births Living people People educated at Colchester Royal Grammar School British economists UK Independence Party parliamentary candidates Members of the Freedom Association Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Alumni of St John's College, Oxford Alumni of Nuffield College, Oxford British Eurosceptics