This post was published on LabourList on 13th September 2010. The TUC conference starts today, and union leaders are declaring war on the coalition’s deficit-reduction strategy. Although some union leaders are talking about ‘civil disobedience’ campaigns and co-ordinated strikes, TUC general secretary Brendan Barber is taking a more cautious and constructive line. He wants a […]
Category: Business and Society
The 2001 winner of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, Professor Joseph Stiglitz, was in Edinburgh last week to give two talks as part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. He is a pioneer of the economics of information, showing how markets can produce unexpected outcomes because information is […]
Fine article from the father of real-world economics on the New Economics Foundation Blog. He counters the mainstream faith in ‘endless growth’ by using economic analysis, but applied to the eco-system as a whole rather than just the narrowly economic system. The new economic question is: are the extra benefits of physically transforming more of […]
Well, if I ever doubted the wisdom of my Guardian on-line piece about bankers and their remuneration, here’s a bit more evidence from Prof Randall Wray in Kansas City! When a firm approaches an investment bank to arrange for finance, the modern investment bank immediately puts together two teams. The first team arranges finance on […]
It was a pleasant surprise to find that the Financial Times chief economics commentator Martin Wolf has come out in favour of a Land Value Tax (an annual tax on the value of land owned), following a debate on the FT website. I have previously written a proposal for a Community Land Value Tax for […]
Moody’s threatened to downgrade Spain’s debt yesterday. Why do we pay any attention to anything they, or the other ratings agencies, say? In conclusion, I have tried to show that Moody’s managers deliberately engineered a change to its culture intended to ensure that rating analysis never jeopardized market share and revenue. They accomplished this both […]
I posted this short piece on the Scotland Quo Vadis discussion site yesterday, in response to a piece by Gordon Morgan suggesting the ‘printing of money’ would be a better option than government spending cuts. It’s important to take a step back and consider the nature of money in the modern economy. It’s taken me […]
Well, they went for it anyway – the Lib-Dems that is. I guess they hope that an AV referendum plus a House of Lords elected by PR will pave the way for more substantive electoral reform for the Commons. (It might also lead to some interesting legitimacy issues too – that has always been the […]
I’ve just posted a paper I produced in 1998, which seems rather prescient. I made the point that the hidden growth of money was leading to fairly predictable changes (not for the better) in our economy and society. Here’s some excerpts from the introduction: Although income inequality appears to be a fact of life there […]
Does professional sport as we know it have much longer to go? Clubs are bankrupt, the play is ignored in favour of endless analysis and criticism over refereeing or umpiring decisions, and the players are subject to pressure and scrutiny that while commensurate with their earnings is obviously not compatible with family life. Even the […]