Tag Archives: history

Part one of backgrounder on Korea. It's a must-read for understanding the situation today.Sic Semper TyrannisMAYDAY KOREA! William R. Polk

Some interesting history. The Levellers were one of the inspirations for classical liberalism and laissez-faire. Libertarianism is a contemporary manifestation of classical liberalism, in contrast to neoliberalism, which incorporates a role for the state in promoting commerce and capital formation.Mises Institute — Mises WireThe Levellers: The First LibertariansRoberta A. Modugno

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. An attempt to measure and rank the most effective ways to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere ranked educating girls and family planning (globally) above green energy. Fewer unplanned births means fewer carbon footprints. (h/t Osman Siddiqi) On Monday, President Trump expanded the “global gag rule” to mean no funding can go to any NGO that also discusses abortion with beneficiaries anywhere in their operations. This expansion grows its...

Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. The datasets above all have the same means, SD, and correlations explain Justin Matejka & George Fitzmaurice of Autodesk in a modern update of Anscombe’s Quartet. But the lesson is the same – always plot your stuff. (h/t everybody) Jobs postings: Summer jobs with Busara Center, full-year with Michael Clemens, and many at the IPA/J-PAL (and several other orgs) jobs portal. Podcasts: Tyler Cowen talks with Cardiff Garcia on FT...

This chart has been fascinating me for ages. It was produced by the Bank of England to illustrate a speech by Andy Haldane. Shock, horror - we have the lowest interest rates for 5,000 years. Even in the Great Depression they were higher than they are now. These are, of course, nominal interest rates. Real interest rates are even lower - though not by much, since inflation is close to zero in all major economies.Note also the divergence of long-term and short-term interest rates. This is...

The Group of 30 central bankers and economists has produced a new report, "Fundamentals of central banking: lessons from the crisis". It traces the history of central banking theory and practice, including the economic thought that underlies it. And it draws from it some important lessons about the causes of the 2008 crisis and the reasons for the very long, slow recovery. I've discussed the main themes of the report here (Forbes).But in this post, I want to focus on a particular piece of...

In-depth analysis on Credit Writedowns Pro. By Fabio Ghironi As originally written at Vox. Success of the German-inspired solution for the latest Greek crisis is far from assured. If it fails, the Eurozone may be changed forever. This column argues that the failure would lead to an outcome that has been favoured for decades by Germany’s Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble. Perhaps the package the Eurozone agreed is just a backdoor way of getting to the ‘variable geometry’ and monetary...