Categories
Economics Politics

Lying in the Cause of Austerity – ‘Budget Hero’

“Budget Hero” – Public Media’s Most Despicable Financial Propaganda is the title of a great anti-austerity piece by William K. Black on the New Economic Perspectives site. It appears that some very strange and economically ignorant people have designed an on-line game to demonstrate their destructive view of how the economy works. Bill Black is […]

Categories
Economics Money and Banking

Is Banking Government-sponsored Counterfeiting?

Banking as Fraud I’ve got involved with one or two on-line debates recently in which the issue of money in commercial banking is seen as a fraudulent process by which value is stolen from citizens. Usually the central bank is seen as the government’s enabler in this process, and so to blame for the resultant […]

Categories
Economics Equality Politics

Beyond ‘The Spirit Level’ – Tackling Inequality

This is a response to ‘The Spirit Level’ and the response to it, with discussion of the implications to be drawn for tackling inequality. You can also download it as a pdf (67kb). This article is on 5 pages, and you can go to the next page you want by clicking on the relevant  number […]

Categories
Economics Politics

Cameron and Osborne sunk my Economy

A version of this post appeared on LabourList on 1st August 2012. The charge sheet against Messrs Cameron and Osborne as the architects of the coalition’s economic strategy is growing, and it may not be long before they, like their buddies Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks, find themselves in the dock.Not perhaps the dock of […]

Categories
Economics

Keynes is all we need

Yet it’s still Keynes from whom we have most to learn. Not Keynes the economic engineer, who is invoked by his disciples today. But Keynes the sceptic, who understood that markets are as prone to fits of madness as any other human institution and who tried to envisage a more intelligent variety of capitalism. John Gray, […]

Categories
Economics

Manifesto for Economic Sense

Join up with some eminent (and eminently sane) economists here. http://www.manifestoforeconomicsense.org/

Categories
Business and Society Economics Politics

What Equality? – Equality of Voice

‘We need to be clear how equality, and what kind of equality (including of what), services our notion of the good society.’ To give David Miliband some credit, he is asking the right question. It’s not clear from his New Statesman sally whether he has the right answer. As characterised by the older brother, ‘Reassurance […]

Categories
Business and Society Economics Politics

Economics and Perception

I’ve read with interest the recent Labour List posts of Owen Jones and Emma Burnell. I think on the politics Emma is right, but on the economics Owen is right to call for a fresh plan of action. Politics these days is a performance, and it’s increasingly a self-interested one where concern for the greater […]

Categories
Business and Society Economics Politics

Austerity is political

This article was published on LabourList on Thursday 12th January 2012. That there is ‘no money left’ is presented to us as an economic fact of life. The Conservatives have embraced it and the Liberal Democrats accepted it. Led by the authors of ‘In the black Labour’ we are at risk of falling in with […]

Categories
Economics Money and Banking Politics

Commentary on GolemXIV in Edinburgh

David Malone, a documentary film maker, perhaps better known these days as blogger on the financial crisis and its causes – operating under the name GolemXIV – gave a talk in Edinburgh on the 6th of December. He’s quite a charismatic guy and gave an effective talk in a church with no aids other than […]