Yearly Archives: 2012
How Coal Brought Us Democracy, and Oil Ended It: Lessons from the New Book “Carbon Democracy”
Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller
Long before politicians mewled helplessly about the power of “Big Oil”, carbon-based fuels were shaping our very political, legal, intellectual, and physical structures.
Read more...On Economic Methodology: An Interview with Sheila Dow
Sheila Dow is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Stirling, Scotland, and Convener of the Scottish Centre for Economic Methodology. Her latest book ‘Foundations for New Economic Thinking’ is available from Amazon.com
Interview conducted by Philip Pilkington
Philip Pilkington: Your book is all about the importance of methodology in economics. Up until now methodology has largely been side-lined. I recall, for example, that Paul Samuelson made a comment to the tune of “Those who cannot do science do methodology”. That strikes me as being broadly the mainstream attitude to any discussions of methodology in economics. In the face of this why do you find methodology to be so important?
Read more...More Evidence of Failure of Obama’s Policies: Census Data Shows Median Incomes Fall, Income Disparity Rises
Matt Stoller pointed out that income disparity, which is associated strongly with negative social indicators (crime rates, poor health outcomes) as well as lower growth, rose faster under Obama than Bush.
Newly released Census data provides more evidence of the failure of Obama’s economic policies. A Bloomberg story summarizes how it shows that median incomes fell even as those at the top showed income gains.
Read more...Links 9/12/12
Quelle Surprise! Regulatory Measures to Reduce Systemic Risk Are Proving to Be Ineffective, Possibly Counterproductive
In an perverse case of synchronicity, one headline last night touted regulatory efforts to address systemic risk as another highlighted bank efforts to increase it. And the ongoing efforts of banks to expand risk creation is no accident.
Read more...The Poster Child of Austerity is Lost
By Delusional Economics. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.
While we wait for tonight’s announcement from the German constitutional court, there are some interesting developments in the Troika’s latest review of Portugal:
Read more...Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Bad Math on AIG
Memo to Andrew Ross Sorkin: if you are going to try to discredit someone, it’s more effective if you are less obvious about it.
Read more...Bloomberg Ranks Most and Least Miserable States
Bloomberg has developed a more detailed approach to looking at “misery” than the traditional “misery index,” which looked only at unemployment and inflation. They took their more granular method and used it to rank states in the US. This looks like a reasonable and useful metric, so I wish they had written a story detailing their approach and publishing the full ranking, but this TV clip gives the high points.
Read more...Links 9/11/12
Getting Economics to Acknowledge Rentier Finance
The economics discipline has for the most part managed to ignore the 800 pound gorilla in the room: that of the role that the financial services industry has come to play. Astonishingly, even though the reengineering of the world economy along the lines preferred by mainstream economists resulted in a prosperity-wrecking global financial crisis and a soft coup by financiers, the discipline carries on methodologically as if nothing much had happened. And one of its huge blind spots is its refusal to acknowledge the role of banking and finance in modern commerce.
Read more...Waldman’s Rational Astrologies, or the Use and Misuse of Conventional Wisdom
Steve Waldman at Interfluidity today has an important post on what he calls “rational astrologies” or when it makes sense to hew to widely accepted belief systems, even when you know following them won’t necessarily produce the best outcomes. You really must read his post in full; I think the first part is terrific but have some quibbles when he tries extending his observation.
Read more...The Euro as Idealist Project or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Pragmatic Elites
By Nathan Tankus,s a member of Occupy Wall Street Alternative Banking working group. He is also deeply involved in the heterodox economics community and plans to have a PhD in economics before the decade is done. Cross posted with View From the Metropole.
In accounts of American economic history, the early days of banking are typically described as chaotic, contradictory and many decisions are depicted as awful, stupid mistakes. That period certainly included all these things, but looking at Europe now, one can’t help but feel that many back then (especially the elites) understood money better and were much better pragmatists.
Read more...Links 9/10/12
Sheila Bair Visits Occupy Wall Street
Sheila Bair, the former FDIC chairman who heads the Systemic Risk Council, and Ricardo Delfina, a fellow Systemic Risk Council member, met on Sunday with members of several Occupy Wall Street working groups: Occupy Bank, Alternative Banking, and Occupy the SEC. I’ve watched presentations by Bair twice previously: once when she was at the FDIC, another not long after she had left government service. Even though she had been pretty direct in those discussions, she was surprisingly specific in this meeting about some of the impediments she faced during the crisis. Some of the topics:
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