Sudden influx of capital can cause range of ailments

I don’t think there’s anything particularly “Dutch” in the idea that if you give somebody a stack of money, he or she might decide to give up the day job.

Nor can you call it a “disease” when somebody has enough wealth to do exactly what they want: put their feet up; take the world cruise; maybe dabble in watercolours.

But the economists, those hard-hearted automatons who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, have coined the phrase “Dutch disease” to describe a precise set of conditions prevailing in a national economy: a sudden influx of capital that leads to a decline in the productivity of the manufacturing sector.