edafe.org » economics

The curse of TINA

edafe — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 20:51:38 +0000

“Think Tanks surround politics today and are the very things that are supposed to generate new ideas. But if you go back and look at how they rose up—at who invented them and why—you discover they are not quite what they seem.” Adam Curtis looks at the history of the Think Tank in the UK and asks why modern politics, for all its Think Tanks, seems so paradoxically short of new ideas.
www.bbc.co.uk

Don’t be fooled by the lull—the NHS is still at great risk

edafe — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 07:29:26 +0000

“New research in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine this week shows the UK is among the most efficient health services in the world, in lives saved per pound spent.” Polly Toynbee further questions imminent public service reforms … Continue reading →

Testosterone and high finance do not mix: so bring on the women

edafe — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 09:20:27 +0000

“There’s been a lot of academic research suggesting that men think they know what they’re doing, even when they really don’t know what they’re doing.” Tim Adams reports on why a sufficiently high percentage of women in decision-making positions might have prevented the 2008 financial crash.
www.guardian.co.uk

Why isn’t Wall Street in jail?

edafe — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 15:17:50 +0000

“Evidence indicates that when it comes to Wall Street, the justice system not only sucks at punishing financial criminals, it has actually evolved into a highly effective mechanism for protecting financial criminals.” Financial crisis ongoing, Matt Taibbi’s article should be of interest to anyone.
www.rollingstone.com

NHS turmoil is just the start of Tory ideology run wild

edafe — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 15:04:34 +0000

“Cameron’s government can be voted out but it will be virtually impossible to return services to a public realm that no longer exists. Ownership of the contracts and companies moves on, and the public sector loses any capacity to take them back.” Polly Toynbee casts doubt on public service reforms in the UK.
www.guardian.co.uk

The roots of the crisis

edafe — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 23:06:15 +0000

“It is the intersection of several underlying trends that have brought us to this point, not a breakdown in any specific part of the financial sector.” Michael Flynn looks at the underlying reasons for the current Wall Street crisis.
www.reason.com

Shares go up and down – economy going nowhere

edafe — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 16:37:58 +0000

“Western capitalism will be able to cope with instability in the markets. But at what price in terms of economic and social stagnation? The danger is that our wider aspirations and horizons are falling further while we remain fixated with the ups and downs of share and property prices”, writes Mike Hume.
www.spiked-online.com

Open secrets

edafe — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 17:38:26 +0000

“Enron proves that in an age of increasing financial complexity the idea that the more a company tells us about its business, the better off we are, has become an anachronism.” Malcolm Gladwell on why Woodward and Bernstein would never have broken the Enron story.
www.newyorker.com

Darwinian markets

edafe — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 19:39:59 +0000

“I’m struck by the work of some of the anti-globalization protesters, which has been admirably out-of-the-tunnel in terms of motivation, but naively ill-informed about how the world economy works.” Economist Paul Seabright on how human beings developed a complex system of cooperation and specialization between unrelated individuals.
www.reason.com

Ego makes entrepreneurs?

edafe — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 19:38:51 +0000

“While conventional wisdom assumes entrepreneurs have great risk tolerance compared to the rest of us, we consistently found that they aren’t really that different. In some cases, they’re even more risk averse.” Researcher Brian Wu finds overconfidence to be the vital ingredient.
www.businessweek.com

Low taxes do what?

edafe — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 19:40:20 +0000

Was Ross Perot right in suggesting that NAFTA would result in a “giant sucking sound”, with US jobs fast disappearing over the border to Mexico? Or did the number of jobs increase after NAFTA went into effect? Thomas Sowell is in search of the facts.
www.hoover.org

10 truths about trade

edafe — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 18:39:17 +0000

“Is globalisation sending the best American jobs overseas? If you get your news from CNN’s Lou Dobbs, the answer is ‘of course’.” Brink Lindsey puts some commonly made assumptions about the US American economy to the test. Useful reading even if, like me, you do not live in North America.
www.reason.com

A cloud over civilisation

edafe — Sun, 01 Aug 2004 16:39:38 +0000

“Wars are a major threat to civilised existence, and a corporate commitment to weapons procurement nurtures this threat.” Economist John Kenneth Galbraith argues that companies control the state.
www.guardian.co.uk