Yearly Archives: 2012

By lambert strether of Corrente.

Readers may remember Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's massive takedown of "the Leader of the Opposition" for sexism and misogyny. In this post, I want to answer the question Yves posted in her headline — "Can We Get Australian PM Julia Gillard to Give Debate Lessons in America?" — in the affirmative, by highlighting some of the rhetorical devices that Gillard used. (For those who think this subject matter is alien to political economy, think again.) I hope that readers find this exercise useful; to participate in public life, some mastery of public speaking is needed. Gillard exhibits such mastery, and by looking at her techniques, I hope many of us can learn from her. Because the more of us who participate in public life, the better.

By Carmen M Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. Reinhart isDennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics; Rogoff is Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at Harvard. Originally published at VoxEU.

The strength of the US recovery has become a political issue in the presidential election. The US is doing better than other advanced economies, but famous economists associated with the Romney campaign claim this is not good enough. The US, they argue, is different. Here, the masters of the ‘this time is different’ research genre – Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff – argue that US historical performance is not different when it is properly measured, so the economy’s performance is better than expected.

This weekend saw massive, coordinated union marches in the UK. In London: “thousands” (FT); tens of thousands (AFP); 100,000 (SWLondoner); 150,000 (Evening Standard). Similar protests took place in Glasgow and Belfast.

Impressive.

Here’s a video from Real News Network:

By Delusional Economics, who is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.

It’s taken me the entire weekend to digest just how underwhelming the latest EU summit was. I spent much of Saturday searching for an important announcement that I must have missed, but alas I couldn’t find one.

As ever the major issues going into the summit were those of the nations that are currently under  economic stress, yet this appears to have been barely touched upon over the two days of chin-wagging. All that has come out of the summit is an agreement on a calendar to deliver a legal framework on a single supervisory mechanism for the EU-wide banking system:

By Yasha Levine of Project S.H.A.M.E., a media transparency initiative led by Yasha Levine and Mark Ames.

By letsgetitdone (Joe Firestone, who is Managing Director and CEO of the Knowledge Management Consortium International (KMCI). Originally published at New Economic Perspectives.

Lambert here: I’ve commissioned Part Two from Joe, which will address the issue of how to spot a neo-liberal “in the wild.”

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During the run-up to passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), I wrote a number of posts (here, here, and here) assessing the ACA very negatively, and pointing out the shortcomings of the various versions of this bill, preceding its final passage. My focus was on contrasting varying versions with HR 676, the Conyers-Kucinich Medicare for All bill, in relation to its likely impact on fatalities, bankruptcies and divorces attributed to lack of health insurance coverage in the US.

Costas Lapavitsas is a professor in economics at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies. He teaches the political economy of finance, and he’s a regular columnist for The Guardian. Here he’s interviewed by Paul Jay of the Real News Network.