April 2011
13 posts
Johann Hari, "Donald Trump's lunacy reveals an... →
“Trump probably won’t become the Republican nominee, but it won’t be because most Republicans reject his premises. No: it will be because he states these arguments too crudely for mass public consumption. He takes the underlying whispered dogmas of the Reagan, Bush and Tea Party years and shrieks them through a megaphone. The nominee will share similar ideas, but express them...
Charlie Whitaker, "Royals"
A great republican piece from A Fistful of Euros.
The monarchy is illiberal. The royal wedding explicitly promotes the norm of marriage: that’s obvious. But the monarchy as a whole also promotes the norms of heterosexuality, male primogeniture, patriarchy, religious worship, military service, and – last but not least – fixed, titled status distinctions. All of these norms are bound up together...
David Lizoain, "Obedience Does Not Pay" →
My friends at the Social Europe Journal have been kind enough to publish another piece of mine.
When it comes to the sovereign debt crisis, it seems that the more strenuously an event is denied, the more likely it is to occur. Governments and institutions have been pretending that what they hope will happen is what will actually take place. Optimism is not a substitute for deleveraging.
New York Magazine profile of Paul Krugman →
What Krugman took from Argentina—and what he thinks even liberals in Washington missed—was “a certain level of understanding,” he says, “that important people have no idea what they’re doing.”
Robert Skidelsky, "Democracy or Finance" →
“The tension between democracy and finance is at the root of today’s rising discontent in Europe. Popular anger at budget cuts imposed at the behest of speculators and bankers has toppled leaders in Ireland and Portugal, and is forcing the Spanish prime minister into retirement.
Of course, there are other targets: Muslim immigrants, ethnic minorities, bankers’ bonuses, the European...
En España también se pagan pocos impuestos
Taken from a series of great tax charts from the CBPP.
Rachel Margolis in the New York Times
My friend Rachel’s work is profiled here in the New York Times.
Rachel Margolis and Mikko Myrskyla, “A Global Perspective on Happiness and Fertility”:
The literature on fertility and happiness has neglected comparative analysis. we investigate the fertility/happiness association using data from the world values Surveys for 86 countries. we fnd that, globally, happiness...
Shamik Das, "Gap in voting rates between young and...
Great graphic from Left Foot Forward:
Wolfgang Münchau, "Complacent Europe must realise... →
“If my hunch on the Spanish property market proves correct, I would expect the Spanish banking sector to need more capital than is currently estimated. It is hard to say how much because we are well outside the scope of forecasting models. When prices drop so fast, there will be much endogenous pressure that no stress test could ever capture.
The mix of high external indebtedness, the...
Paul Krugman, "Why People Say “Eeh!” When They... →
“During the eurobubble years, there were huge capital flows to peripheral economies, leading to a sharp rise in their costs relative to Germany. Now the bubble has burst, and one way or another those relative costs need to be brought back in line. But should that take place via German inflation or Spanish deflation?
From a pan-European view, the answer is surely some of both — and given...
False Economy: Why cuts are the wrong cure →
Jesus Felipe and Utsav Kumar, "Do some countries... →
“The problem with Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain is that they are uncompetitive and need to internally devalue - or so the argument goes. This column challenges this conclusion by pointing out that the measure used to back it up - unit labour costs - is flawed and misguided. Europe’s periphery lack of competitiveness is related to the types of products they export and not...
Madeleine Bunting, "New Labour insisted that the... →
“To win back support the party must rediscover the value of nostalgia, and understand people’s yearning for security.”
