Italy investigates pasta makers over ‘price-fixing’ BBC
22 million missing Bush White House e-mails found Associated Press
Bernanke’s Saving’s Glut Hypothesis. Contradiction Number One EconoSpeak
Battle of the Bulge, from Scott Brooks Daily Speculations
Handing Over Goods for Promises David Merkel
Late Night: Democrats More Likely to Believe in Ghosts, Past Lives, Mediums FireDogLake. This isn’t surprising. New Age types presumably would skew heavily Democratic.
Abkhazia Is Recognized — by Nauru New York Times
US needs less haste and more thought Financial Times. The US needs more forensic work on why the crisis happened. “Oh, we had a subprime crisis, and everything was connected, so it all fell down” is not adequate.
How Banks Fleece the Unemployed ConsortiumNews
Gold Buying by Central Banks Signals Sell as Past Haunts Future Bloomberg
The Problem with Paul Samuelson Michael Hudson (hat tip reader Crocodile Chuck). Today’s must read. Note this article first ran in 1970.
Antidote du jour (hat tip reader Barbara). I’ve put up a video of this fellow, but I think these pix are nicer. I may put up some other ones from this series from time to time.
This Ranger is assigned to prevent poaching around the wildlife refuge area of Lanseria, South Africa .
The way these animals interact with him is absolutely stunning! The lions seem to know he’s there to protect them.
His charm works with hyenas too. Hyenas are usually vicious. Check out the pics taken in the river amazing because lions hate water.
Warning: Don’t try this at home.
17 comments
Comments are closed.
Isn’t it funny how they now tell us not to buy gold because the “central banks” are buying it, but ten years ago you weren’t supposed to buy gold because the “central banks” were selling it? The distinction, for Professor Morici, who is either corrupted or willfully obtuse, is that the central banks that were selling were Europeans getting rid of the family silver and the central banks that are buying are Asians trying to diversify out of fiat currencies.
Central banks have different motivations and circumstances; they are not monolithic. The propaganda against precious metals just makes me want to own them more.
Regarding the Counterpunch article;
Economics — easily hijacked head fuck voodoo science.
Samuelson — sell out voodoo head fuck science priest for vanilla greed.
Krugman — sell out voodoo head fuck science priest for more pernicious neocon greed.
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
We’ll be reading about this guy someday – and not in a good way.
I’m with you on that. As I noted in response to a previous article, the Disney Generation needs the occasional reminder that wild animals really are wild animals. I would have that that the untimely demise of Steve Irwin would have finally hammered that point home, but I guess not.
Heh. Yeah, I was thinking that hyena is so soft & cuddly I’d like a couple for house pets.
Yep.
Sometimes things can suddenly take a turn for the worse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8NfjpMsoWc&feature=related
And sometimes they can really take a turn for the worse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmEVploWjCY
Some context for the lion guy, Kevin Richardson, who apparently runs a wildlife park called Lion Park outside of Johannesburg.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Lion-King-Kevin-Richardson-Treated-Like-One-Of-The-Pride-By-The-Big-Cats-At-His-South-Africa-Reserve/Article/200903315245291?lpos=World_News_News_Your_Way_Region_3&lid=NewsYourWay_ARTICLE_15245291_Lion_King_Kevi
Thanks, Yves, for posting these Richardson photos/videos. Such an awesome spectacle.
I’m not sure what the best way to contact Yves and this blog is… so I apologize if this is the wrong place to be doing this — but I have been involved with the organization of an upcoming conference that I think (many? some?) readers of this blog would be interested in – for a journal called Historical Materialism. The conference runs january 14-16 in manhattan and pre-registration is strongly suggested because space will be limited. It is a marxist conference, as the title suggests, and about a third of the conference is devoted to panels on the economic crisis, money, finance, theories of economic crisis, etc…
The program is still not finished – but will be shortly.
And Yves – if you were available and interested in speaking – we would love to have you participate!! (I’m a big fan of this blog)
info ::: hm2010.nyc ( a– t ) gmail (D*o*t) com
“The Problem with Paul Samuelson” by Michael Hudson is quite superb.
My only beef with Hudson would be in this paragraph:
To a large extent the discipline’s revolt against British classical political economy was a reaction against Marxism, which represented the logical culmination of classical Ricardian economics and its paramount emphasis on the conditions of production. Following the counter-revolution, the motive force of economic behavior came to be viewed as stemming from man’s wants rather than from his productive capacities, organization of production, and the social relations that followed therefrom. By the postwar period the anti-classical revolution (curiously termed neo-classical by its participants) had carried the day. Its major textbook of indoctrination was Paul Samuelson’s Economics.
Hudson seems to be too close to his subject. He can’t see the forest for the trees, which causes him to focus on a number of internecine skirmishes. Even though these disagreements do indeed exist, they all nevertheless occur well within the tradition and confines laid down by Classical Economics.
But if one stands farther back, one can see that the entire edifice of Classical Economics, including all these schisms that came in its wake, are all built on sand.
It was Adam Smith that started us down this slippery slope.
The Problem with Paul Samuelson
“Thus, if the Nobel prize could be awarded posthumously, both Ricardo and Malthus, Marx and Marshall would no doubt qualify, just as both Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman were leading contenders for the 1970 prize. [Friedman got his Nobel in 1976.] Who, on the other hand, can imagine the recipient of the physics or chemistry prize holding a view not almost universally shared by his colleagues?”
Yup. Might as well be discussing religion
Regarding the lions et al.
A few years ago, my wife and I stopped at the fund raising travelling show of a wildlife rescue organization. They mainly receive animals from private zoos or collectors who were busted, out of funds, or no longer able to care for their pets.
We spent 20 minutes with a tiger cub; it was somewhat intoxicating to spend time with him. Then the handlers showed us the scars that they had received while caring for their charges. The feeling of danger is part of the response, and knowing that this 50 pound cub could mangle our hand permanently gave me a lot of respect for people who care for animals like this on a daily basis–but not for those who keep them as pets.
You could have a low self esteem lion. lioness or hyena on diet. It may thus be delaying that urge at instant gratification.
But you don’t know when it will be off diet.
That’s how I see the world.
Regarding the counterpunch article:
http://blog.hedoniccalculus.com/2009/12/16/the-problem-with-michael-hudsons-problem-with-paul-samuelson.aspx
Hope you and Barbara really enjoyed this. This guy is a moron who will end up as dead meat one day. His one and only deal is being a babe magnet by playing Russian roulette with cuddly mean eaters.
No matter who you are, or how you were raised, you have only two true choices in life. Live in fear and be unloved, or be fearless and perchance be loved.
Also found the Hudson article a good read, but this passage caught my eye:
“Nowhere is the sterility of this equilibrium preconception more apparent than in Mr. Samuelson’s famous factor-price equalization theorem, which states that the natural tendency of the international economy is for wages and profits among nations to converge over time. As an empirical historical generality this obviously is invalid. International wage levels and living standards are diverging, not converging, so that the rich creditor nations are becoming richer while poor debtor countries are becoming poorer — at an accelerating pace, to boot.
There’d be many qualifying details, but SOMETHING about this has been born out – that something is what the BRIC economies and the stagnant real wages of American workers is about. Granted, that I am richer in some ways is evidenced by my ability to post this observation from the middle of America where it will be transmitted via a “series of tubes” from my desktop computer – though none of the latter’s components were made in this country …
So Hudson’s point here (is that in his new book?) is that Samuelson’s explanation (factor-price equalization) was refuted by the facts of 1970, nor does it explain what’s so different about the world nearly 40 years later…?