Changes

|title=Free Lunch - Easily Digestible Economics

|author=David Smith

|publisher=Profile Books

|date=August 2012

|summary=Eyes glaze over when the likes of Robert Peston start talking about quantitative easing or credit default swaps on the news? David Smith's jargon free guide to economics keeps things simple and is a fine primer to firm up your knowledge on the so-called dismal science.

}}

Reading David Smith's new book Free Lunch brought to mind an episode of the Freakonomics podcast broadcast earlier this year. In it, listeners were first asked to imagine that the interest rate on their bank account was 1% per year and the rate of inflation was 2% per year. In a year's time would they be able to buy more, buy about the same or buy less using money from that account?