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In January 1980 Jimmy Carter enacted a grain export embargo against the Soviet Union because of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The embargo was ineffective as the resulting gap in Soviet imports, at the time and for quite some years to come a net grain importer, was filled by countries like Argentina. In 2022 things have changed. After 2000, Russia as well as Ukraine became major grain exporters, playing an important role in global food supply chains. In both countries...

The ten richest billionaires- all men- have seen their wealth more than double from $700bn to $1.5 trillion between March 2020 and November 2021, according to calculations by Oxfam based on Forbes billionaires. They now own six times more wealth than the poorest 40% of the global population, some 3.1 billion people. Source: ForbesTaken together, the world’s billionaires saw their wealth increase by $5.2 trillion to $13.8 trillion between March 2020 and November 2021. This is more than the...

from Peter Radford Intellectual vanities abound in a technocratic society.  It seems inevitable that as we push the boundaries of knowledge further and further into the space of potential beyond our current state that the division of labor presses down on us.  We become, each of us, more distant from any sense of self-sufficiency.  Such a state is an absurdity in our technologically infused and dependent world.  We have become enmeshed in the very supplementary support system we...

I plan to write my own thoughts on this topic soon, but I’d be interested to read yours. Usual rules apply. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

from Lars Syll For many people, deductive reasoning is the mark of science: induction – in which the argument is derived from the subject matter – is the characteristic method of history or literary criticism. But this is an artificial, exaggerated distinction. Scientific progress … is frequently the result of observation that something does work, which runs far ahead of any understanding of why it works. Not within the economics profession. There, deductive reasoning based on logical...

Before the invasion of Ukraine, there was a clear consensus on the limitations of economic sanctions. They would take a long time to organize and even longer to have any effect. Just about every commentary I read anticipated Russian tanks in Kiev long before sanctions could have any effect. That judgement now looks way off the mark. Despite some limited advances in the south of Ukraine, Putin’s invasion seems to have stalled. Meanwhile sanctions, both official and unofficial, have...

from Peter Radford I am still stuck wondering about Diane Coyle’s defense of economics. Heraclitus exists only in fragments.  That’s unfortunate because aphorisms are not the best way to tackle the hubris of the technocrat.  He was on to something though.  We all know his well-worn saying about stepping into rivers.  He tells us that they’re never the same twice.  And yet they stay the same.  Beware, then, the analyst that thinks she sees a regularity in our economy.  It may look the...

from Dean Baker From my Twitter feed it seems that Sarah Palin has been resurrected. All sorts of centrist-liberal types are yelling “drill baby, drill!” as a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They have been pushing for ignoring environmental regulations and even directly subsidizing fracking. While that is no doubt music to the ears of the fossil fuel industry, this is going backwards about as quickly as we can in our effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There is an...