Herr Doktor Professor ain’t the only one with a Nobel Prize in Economics. Monopoly’s New Era Joseph E. Stiglitz, Project Syndicate MAY 13, 2016 For 200 years, there have been two schools of thought about what determines the distribution of income – and how the economy functions. One, emanating from Adam Smith and nineteenth-century liberal …
Tag: ek Politics
May 20 2016
Just an Accident
Sure. Doctors With Enemies: Did Afghan Forces Target the M.S.F. Hospital? By MATTHIEU AIKINS, The New York Times MAY 17, 2016 For the last hour, the American gunship had been circling high above the city, carefully observing its target with night-vision sensors and waiting for clearance to strike. It was 2 in the morning on …
May 19 2016
What Inflation?
As any reputable economist knows (yes, there are a few) Price Indexes whether Consumer or Producer and regardless of any particular basket of items included are unreliable indicators of actual inflation. Fluctuation of price over time, normally in an upward direction, is only to be expected and the measure of individual prosperity is more correctly …
May 18 2016
The Emperor’s New Clothes
I’ll assume you’re familiar with the tale of the vain and foppish Emperor who gets conned by a peasant into believing he has the finest suit in the land when in fact he’s entirely naked. The political point of the story is that none of his courtiers or even the regular folk dare tell him …
May 17 2016
Say… Cheese
I’m still trying to unpack Bill Black’s 3 part (of two) criticism of Mankiw, but fortunately I studied Samuelson and Nordhaus who at least pay lip service to the seminal macroeconomic insights of Keynes. One of the concepts Keynes explores is that what is rational and logical behavior from a micro-economic standpoint can be profoundly …
May 16 2016
Yeah, They Did This
What you need to understand about the CIA is that they occasionally leak things to prove that they’re spooky and incredibly dangerous instead of merely incompetent moron mediocrities. The CIA’s mysterious role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela By Adam Taylor, Washington Post May 16 at 12:35 PM This weekend, that speculation was reignited by …
May 16 2016
The Blogging Thing
I’ve only been doing it since 2005 which is 3 years less (in Muggle time) than Atrios and translates into something like the Jurassic Period of the Mesozoic Era (roughly 56 Million Blog Years) and even I, as insanely envious and dismissive as I am, must admit that occasionally, in certain rare moments when he’s …
May 13 2016
Meanwhile, in France and Canada
Hollande Continues to Prove that a Fake Left-Winger Is Worse than Most Right-Wingers by Ian Welsh 2016 May 11 Hollande is a far more loathsome individual than, say, British PM David Cameron. Cameron ran as a right-wing pig-fucker who intended to destroy the social state. There are other options than neoliberalism, but people like Hollande …
May 13 2016
Risky Business
Now normally it wouldn’t be significant that an 80 year old finance minister chose to resign, but Saudi Arabia is not a normal place and the replacement of Ali al-Naimi by Khalid al-Falih marks a take over of the Oil Ministry by militant Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (referenced in the article as MbS) and …
May 11 2016
What could possibly go wrong?
So, you have this fertilizer plant that hasn’t been inspected in years and years in Texas where regulation is lax at best and in this case absolutely non-existant. You store hundreds of tons of chemicals, all legitimate components of fertilizer mind you despite that fact that in many combinations they are highly explosive. As in …
May 11 2016
Tub Rings
Does anyone take baths anymore? I do when I have to (when I visit with my Aunt for instance) but I much prefer showers. If you don’t or haven’t in a while you may have forgotten a little phenomena called ‘Tub Ring’. This is a thin ring of grime that forms where the surface of …
May 09 2016
The Difference Between Science And… uh… Not Science
I try not to work blue where it can be picked up in the search engines. As you know I’m a big fan of science and I’m well aware of the difference between science and not science. One type of science is observational, think of the work James Audubon did with the birds of North …