Month: December 2010
Good riddance 2010, Welcome 2011
, 31/12/2010
No year is of course responsible for what we humans get up to during its course. But then again, the very concept of a year would not exist without us. In this sense, it is not illegitimate to farewell 2010 with a sense of outrage at what it brought us. So, what did it bring? Paul […]
The Joylessness of Happiness Economics
, 28/12/2010
Or why looking for happiness is not like looking for gold That money cannot buy happiness has been known at least since the Midas story gained currency in ancient Greece. What is new is that, after the Crash of 2008, what had hitherto passed as scientific economics (and the neoliberal policies that they supported) lost […]
A thought for Xmas Day: Faustus, Scrooge and Debt in the Age of Capital
, 25/12/2010
Some idle economic thoughts for Christmas day: In late 16th century, Christopher Marlowe told the story of Dr Faustus who famously contracted, using his own blood to sign on the dotted line, to sell his body and soul twenty four years hence to Mephistopheles. [i] In exchange he demanded, and secured, a long catalogue of […]
Quiz question
, 24/12/2010
Quiz: Who wrote the following and when“To read the newspapers just now is to see Bedlam let loose. Everyone who hates social progress and loves deflation feels that his hour has come, and triumphantly announces how, by refraining from every form of economic activity, we can become prosperous again” ?
From Scrooge's rehabilitation to Scroogeonomics?
, 24/12/2010
Two days ago, I called for the rehabiliation of Ebenezer Scrooge. Today, in the FT, Martin Wolf goes one step further: he puts forward Scroogeonomics. I beg to differ. Scrooge offers an excellent morality tale for our day and age. But not a blueprint for economic thinking. Then again, I am sure Martin Wolf knows […]
Striking Greece, Dithering Europe and the Modest Proposal
, 22/12/2010
I had posted here an interview of mine on the BBC World Service (World Business News) on the Greek government budget, the resulting strike and the prospects of austerity. I used the opportunity briefly to outline the Modest Proposal. However, as the BBC updates this particular program ten times a day, the link seems to […]
Austerity? What austerity? In defence of Ebenezer Scrooge
, 21/12/2010
The figure of Ebenezer Scrooge is the only one that our societies allow their upstanding members to despise during the festive season. Of course, the point of the ritual admonition of Dickens’ Christmas Carol protagonist is to celebrate charity and the Christmas spirit by focusing attention on Scrooge’s remarkable Christmas Eve transformation (with the ghosts’ […]
Alternative Strategies for Exiting the Euro Crisis
, 19/12/2010
And why they do not measure up to the Modest Proposal The good news is that the debate we had to have about a year ago is, at long last, beginning. The bad news is that it is proceeding slowly and in often hopeless directions. The recent EU summit, for instance, decidedly refused even to […]
The Modest Proposal in 600 words
, 17/12/2010
I was just asked to prepare a shortened version (600 words) of the Modest Proposal for publication in the UK Government Gazette. Since some of you may be interested in a handier, punchier version, here it is:
Echoes of the Modest Proposal begin to reverberate in Germany
, 15/12/2010
An article of immense importance appeared in the Financial Times yesterday, 14th December 2010. Effectively, it signalled a split in the country’s hitherto united front on its vision of the eurozone. Its social democrat authors, Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Germany’s Foreign Minister, 2005-9) and Peer Steinbrück (Germany’s Finance Minister, 2005-9), pinned their colours on the mast of […]
Stuart Holland on: Where Angela Merkel is right, but should learn up from the New Deal
, 14/12/2010
Jean-Claude Juncker and Giulio Tremonti have broken the wall of silence on Eurobonds and are right to recommend the transfer of a major share of national debt to the Europen Union. As Yanis Varoufakis already has made plain, whether this is 40 per cent or 60 per cent as we have recommended for such a […]
A late night discussion with Richard Holbrooke remembered
, 14/12/2010
It was summer of 2003. The setting was the island of Kos, a stone’s throw from the Turkish coast. Richard Holbrooke was participating at that year’s Symi Symposium organised by George Papandreou, then Greece’s Foreign Minister, currently Prime Minister. Though not a participant in that symposium (which also featured notables like Bill Clinton, Segolen Royal […]
The Modest Proposal and the Juncker-Tremonti Plan: A comparison
, 14/12/2010
France and Germany have ensured that this week’s European Council will not debate the Juncker-Tremonti plan for addressing the current euro crisis by covering part of existing sovereign debt by issuing eurobonds. Nevertheless rumours of the plan’s death are premature overstated. France and Germany know well that something along the JT plan is unavoidable, if […]
Wikileaks' Precursor and Unsung Foe of Neoliberal Economics
, 11/12/2010
A tribute to Daniel Ellsberg, whose analytical work exposed the Achilles’ Heal of toxic economics forty seven years before the Crash of 2008, and whose courageous leaking of the Pentagon Papers stunned the world by exposing thousands of documents revealing the US government’s lies about Vietnam.
Twelve multiples choice questions for teaching the eurozone crisis to macroeconomic beginners
, 09/12/2010
My good friend and colleague Gary Dymski (Economics Professor at University California, Riverside) has sent me 12 multiple choice questions that offer a wonderful training ground for macroeconomic novices. It would be interesting to make our European political leaders take it. How well do you think they would do?
If greed did not cause it, what did?
, 07/12/2010
On Monday 6th December, I gave the keynote speech at a conference near Brisbane, Queensland (Australia) on the theme of Risk Management after the crisis. I was warned that the large audience of professionals (corporate lawyers, chartered accountants, risk managers etc. – people whose jobs I do not really understand) were tough cookies; that nothing […]
The Modest Proposal fully adopted by Europe’s Trades Union Council. And backed, in part, by Jean Claude Juncker in the FT
, 06/12/2010
In the past few days, our Modest Proposal for the resolution of the euro crisis seems to have made headway on two separate, quite disparate, fronts. On Wednesday 2nd December, the European Trades Unions Council (the confederation of Europe’s trades unions) endorsed it fully and unequivocally in its Agenda Item 5c which came under the […]
The Worst Case Scenario for the Eurozone
, 05/12/2010
And so the nightmare continues. Are we heading for the worst case scenario? To answer this, we must first work out what that is.
Antisemitism's handmaidens
, 02/12/2010
I was recently sent a book that warmed my heart and disturbed my soul. It is entitled Antisemitism: Real and imagined: Responses to the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to combat antisemitism, edited by Michael Keefer (Waterloo Ontario: The Canadian Charger, 2010). Before I share my thoughts occasioned by reading it, a full disclosure is important:
The Art of the Possible: Or how to blend Eurobonds with Maastricht
, 02/12/2010
Gavyn Davies, in today’s FT (click here) suggests, as we do in our Modest Proposal, that eurobonds are preferable in the fight against the vicious circle facing the eurozone than the current strategy of loaning bankrupt states money they cannot repay under the offered terms. He writes: “[T]he ECB may eventually come to prefer…for the […]
The ECB's expensive folly: A new Maginot Line
, 01/12/2010
Behind the scenes the European Central Bank (ECB) is struggling to construct a barrier that will prevent the firestorm which started in Greece from breaching the Iberian defences and, eventually, from turning to Italy. It is only right and proper that the ECB should try to accomplish this. The only trouble is that the barrier […]