The press ran several “rip-off Britain” stories last summer when the strong pound pushed UK shop prices above their Continental counterparts.But who is to blame for high prices? Before macro-economic policy was taken out of the political arena, the press might have focused on the exchange rate Instead, it ran a profit story. So a new synthesis is emerging, which says that a normal return on capital is respectable, indeed necessary, but that excessive profits are obscene.High profits are a sign of too high prices, and the cure for both is more competition. Now, the fashionable cure is increased competition.It is a cure that goes well with the New Labour policy agenda New Labour wants to be business-friendly Business is all about making a profit Yet profit was anathema to Old Labour. And so, as macro-economic counter-inflation policy moves out of the political limelight, we see micro-economic policy moving to centre stage.
In the 1970s and 1980s the standard medicine for too much inflation was to print less money. Probably the most important consequence of low inflation is that relative price movements become very apparent – and those who put up prices are quickly accused of profiteering.

THE BUSINESS implications of the conquest of inflation will dominate strategic thinking in the early years of the next millennium. He should be allowed to build again,” she wrote to The Washington Post, “revel in his success and be proud of the beaver that he can become; because this is America.” To which there is surely only one response: “Bravo! Bravo! God bless the Beaver – and God bless America!”Mary Dejevsky. Everyone did their best.The traps were the most humane on the market; a Pennsylvania couple offered the vacant pond on their estate, but the park service said that as celebrities, the beavers deserved to have their new address kept private.One woman even described the beaver as a “true follower of the American Dream. With a real war never far away, any hint of deportation, still less species- cleansing, was off-limits. By Monday, though, there was talk of a third beaver; perhaps a whole family.By now, the park service – its phone lines jammed by callers appealing for the beavers to be spared – was having to watch its language.

We have had sightings.” On Saturday night, moonlit blossom-strollers (their ranks now swelled with beaver-watchers and television crews) witnessed the capture of a second “furry critter” or “tree-murderer” (depending on your point of view). But before they could claim their bounty, word came from a chastened park service: “We believe there are now two beavers. Vulnerable trees were encased in netting, and a $1,500 (pounds 940) contract was put out on the beaver: the trappers were called in.On night two of their patrol, a spectacular success: they had their beaver – alive. It was “save our beavers” against “save our trees” – causes equal in environmental merit, but fundamentally incompatible. The National Park Service had the unenviable task of “doing something”. It set off “slow and easy” (its words) on a twin-track policy of prevention.

In Beaver v Cherry Trees, this city of lawyers was split evenly. Small matter that neither had been much in evidence before then.Expert examination, however, turned up not axe marks, but tooth marks The culprit was a beaver Whereupon everything changed. With the most celebrated chopper of cherry trees, George Washington, long gone, suspicion alighted on two enemies of the moment: anti-war protesters and – perish the thought – disgruntled Serbs. Smashed to the ground, heavy with pink blossom, they looked like ravished May queens, and the city was out for vengeance.

And while hawks and ducks and deer may be two a penny in the capital, it is not every day you see a beaver.So it was with shocked incredulity that the park service admitted last week that four of the sacred cherries had been cruelly felled. Washington does not have many sources of civic pride, but it affects a communal swoon over the hundreds of Japanese cherry trees that bloom along the tidal basin of the Potomac River at this time of year. To understand the fuss about the beavers, you need to know two things. Just a week or so ago, a wandering coyote was apprehended in Central Park. It was shot (with an anaesthetising dart, the police hastened to add), and caged for dispatch to a more conventional habitat “up-state”.