Tag Archives: Uncategorized

from Dean Baker Donald Trump made his opposition to much of America’s international trade policy a central theme in his presidential campaign, and his position almost certainly played a major role in his victory in key industrial states like Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. But the public now seems largely opposed to his recent tariffs against our major trading partners. It is possible to make sense of these seemingly contradictory facts. First, most people are not policy wonks. They...

The pursuit of wrongdoing by unions and union officials by the Abbott-Turnbull government has been highly successful in producing evidence of wrongdoing. The problem is that the wrongdoing has been that of the pursuers, not the pursued. Some examples * The forced resignation of Australian Building and Construction Commission chairman Nigel Hadkiss, after he was found to have breached the Act he was supposed to be enforcing * Two separate cases in which the Australian Federal Police were...

from Asad Zaman This is an assorted collection of quotes I have found useful from time to time in different contexts. I am putting them all together for my own reference, as well as for the benefit of others who may find them similarly useful to make points. JM Keynes Quotes (mostly from General Theory GT): The composition of this book has been for the author a long struggle of escape, and so must the reading of it be for most readers if the author’s assault upon them is to be...

from Emil Urhammer Drinking the strength of life from men doomed to die, spitting the crimson blood on all the lands of gods; black becomes the sun in summers to follow, weather spells disaster – Need you know more? With this stanza, I begin my story of the divine belief in Economics at the beginning of the 21st century, when this faith was practised and reached the height of its glory. . . . The disastrous climate changes that truly came into effect in the second half of the 21st...

from Dean Baker At the NATO summit earlier this month, Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, was forced to publicly praise Donald Trump’s leadership. Mr. Stoltenberg is almost certainly a very intelligent hardworking man. That is virtually a prerequisite for a person in his position. By contrast, Donald Trump is the most ignorant ill-prepared person ever to sit in the White House. Nonetheless, when Stoltenberg noted the increases in military spending by NATO members, Trump...

from Lars Syll In issue 1-2 (2018) of Oxford Review of Economic Policy, the editors have invited some well-known contemporary mainstream macroeconomists (including e.g. Simon Wren-Lewis, Randall Wright, Olivier Blanchard, Ricardo Reis, Joseph Stiglitz) to give their views on how to rebuild macroeconomic theory for the future. Some of the contributions are interesting to read. Others — like Wren-Lewis and Blanchard — seem to think that we can basically just go on with our microfounded DSGE...

Remember, a tariff  is a tax. So we have a republican president trying to solve problems by raising taxes. Has anyone told Grover Norquist ?

from David Ruccio In international human rights law, a “forced disappearance” occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization (or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization), followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person’s fate and whereabouts, with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law. The most infamous forced disappearances have occurred in Spain...

Shinobu Hashmoto just died at age 100. His original screenplay for the greatest movie ever made in Japan was initially written while he was recovering in a Japanese hospital for war veterans.with him having tuberculosis. It is famous for showing how different observers of reality may have different views of that reality. The film’s director was Kurowsawa, who worked closely with Hashimoto on many of his films. Regarding the greatest of them all,...