Edward Luttwak

In complaining that my article on central bankism ignored the influence of the money-markets, Victor Smart argues that they ‘punish mercilessly’ any country which opts for a soft money policy (Letters, 28 November). Very true – but how is that punishment inflicted? By marking down a country’s currency of course. And what consequences ensue in these deflationary times of chronic excess capacity?...

Without ever quite declaring it, Jeremy Harding (LRB, 3 February) persuasively differentiates sub-Saharan African refugees from all others. Kurds, Iraqis, Albanians, Sri Lankans, Romanians, Russians etc are fleeing the disruptions of war or the upheavals of post-Communism. Sub-Saharan Africans, on the other hand, are fleeing sub-Saharan Africa as such, or at least its governance. Sometimes there is...

Reviel Netz asks (LRB, 20 July) why a ranger would want to fence in his cattle. Incest is our reason. In some 200 square kilometres of Amazonic savannah, we are more rangers than ranchers, but we fence off 5000-acre pastures for our calves to keep parental bulls from mating with their two-year-old offspring, who get to have their own young bulls.Incidentally, three-strand fencing costs $450 a kilometre...

Edward Said (LRB, 14 December 2000) failed to note two points not irrelevant to his contentions. First, the great quantity of new Palestinian housing that has greatly enlarged every village on the West Bank, turned many into sizable towns and some into veritable cities – Ramallah, for example, is now something of a metropolis. Much of this housing is spacious, even luxurious. This hardly fits Said’s...

Because I know so little of current British cattle-raising practices, I found the letters of Messrs Scott, O’Leary and Urquhart (Letters, 8 March) very interesting indeed. David Scott worries for my bull calves and their testicles, implying that castration is unnecessary as well as cruel (though we use supposedly painless plastic clips). We find that, unless castrated, the males fight each other...