User:Ktin/sandbox/Brian Reading

Brian Reading (1936-2020) was a British economist and writer known for his contributions to the field of international economics and his role as an economic advisor to the British government. He was educated at Oxford University and later worked in academia, the government, and the media, and was a prolific writer who published numerous books on economics.

Early Life
Reading was born in 1936 in London, England. He studied at the Scarborough College in Yorkshire and later received a degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Wadham College, Oxford University, on a state scholarship. After graduating, he completed a postgraduate program at Nuffield College and worked as a lecturer at Christ Church before serving as an economic adviser to the governor of the Bank of England.

Career
Reading began his career in government as an advisor to the newly formed Department of Economic Affairs after the Labour Party's victory in the 1964 general election. He worked on the national plan and became increasingly disillusioned with Labour's interventionist policies, eventually switching to the Conservative Party in 1966. In the 1970s, he worked with Arthur Cockfield on tax reform, replacing the selective employment tax and purchase tax with value-added tax.

In 1972, Reading became the first economics editor of The Economist, a position he held for nearly two decades. In 1991, he co-founded the macroeconomic consultancy Lombard Street Research with Tim Congdon. In this role, he was a strong advocate for flow of funds analysis and had a successful track record of forecasting economic events, including the Japanese economic stagnation of the 1990s and the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s.

Reading was a prolific writer who published numerous books on economics. Some of his notable works include "The Power of Money" and "The World Economy in Crisis," both of which were widely praised for their insight and clarity. He also wrote "Japan: The Coming Collapse," in which he anticipated the country's economic stagnation in the 1990s, and "The Global Debt Bomb," which examined the causes and consequences of the global financial crisis of 2007-2009.

Personal Life
Reading was married to Tiffany Reading, his fourth wife. He had three children from his second marriage. He died on December 14, 2020 at the age of 86.