Naomi Oreskes: All good myths have a kernel of truth. The other title: MAGA: You’ve been played. In her book: The Big Myth, How American Business Taught us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market she researched the history of the source of the position and ideology of “Free Market” capitalism void of regulation. It came out of her work researching big tobacco and climate change for her book: Merchants of Doubt. The short of the...

In your face …, Homeless on the High Desert, Gda says . . . October 21, 2017 in White Rose “In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves...

Escape from Muddle Land, Econospeak, Peter Dorman Let’s get the up-or-down part of this review over with quickly: Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It by Erica Thompson is a poorly written, mostly vacuous rumination on mathematical modeling, and you would do well to ignore it. Now that that’s done, we can get on with the interesting aspect of this book, its adaptation of trendy radical...

I’ve lived through quite a few financial crises, some local to Australia, and others global. Invariably, the first failures are those of obvious shonks (Australianism?) who would probably have failed anyway. Then there are seemingly reputable institutions that turn out to have been shonky. Then there are institutions that played by the rules, but it turns out the rules weren’t good enough. After that, no one is safe and the government steps in to bail the bankers out.Of course,...

The details of a shotgun marriage between UBS and Credit Suisse arranged by Swiss regulators have been leaking out. Credit Suisse has been plagued by problems, and one might hope that this act would finally clear them up. The concern I am seeing at the time of writing is the risk of contagion.As an aside, we can tell this is a bit of a crisis by my posting frequency.…Bond EconomicsBank Capital Contagion CommentBrian Romanchuk

Blog Driving us round the bend: another fuel duty freeze Fuel duty has been frozen for the 13th year in a row. When will the government abandon this regressive, environmentally damaging policy? By Alex Chapman 20 March 2023 The spring budget saw...

A new sandpit for long side discussions, conspiracy theories, idees fixes and so on. To be clear, the sandpit is for regular commenters to pursue points that distract from regular discussion, including conspiracy-theoretic takes on the issues at hand. It’s not meant as a forum for visiting conspiracy theorists, or trolls posing as such. Like this:Like Loading...

Another Message Board Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. I’ve moved my irregular email news from Mailchimp to Substack. You can read it here. You can also follow me on Mastodon here I’m also trying out Substack as a blogging platform. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

ΟΙ ΧΡΕΩΚΟΠΙΕΣ Στις 10/3, η καλιφορνέζικη τράπεζα Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) έγινε η μεγαλύτερη τράπεζα που πτωχεύει από την οικονομική κρίση του 2008. Ήταν η 16η μεγαλύτερη αμερικανική εμπορική τράπεζα. Εξειδικευόταν σε δοσοληψίες με εταιρείες τεχνολογίας και υγειονομικής περίθαλψης και ιδιαίτερα σε επενδύσεις σε «start-up» εταιρείες. Η χρεωκοπία της SVB πυροδοτήθηκε από σημαντικές ζημιές σε τίτλους επιχειρήσεων τις οποίες είχε δανείσει. Προσπάθησε να τις καλύψει με αύξηση...