Because of writing and travel commitments, I’ll be blogging less frequently for the next few months. I’ll try to put up some open threads – please keep discussion on these threads civil and friendly, so that I don’t have to intervene in their management.
we’ll be just like your kids would be if you left them with the house and car while you were away
i promise
p
US pushing world’s number 1 rice exporter to embrace GM in face of “NGO and consumer groups continue to oppose biotech crops and foods (also known as genetically modified organisms or GMOs).”
Tactics include using spin to try to tie it to climate change.
If it is so great it should sell itself on its own merits without having to employ subterfuge.
http://www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=10BANGKOK111
The trick is to restrain oneself to one civilised comment and one civilised link… otherwise its off to the moderation bin. Like being drawn across the coals by a (nineteen) fifties matriach. Young man, we don’t mind what you say, but all things in moderation….
Poor ‘ol Bernanke …. the recovery hasn’t happened, and all he can look forward to, is a hoped-for turnaround due to “pent up demand” or possible “additional monetary stimulus” (to be considered in September).
From Jackson Hole Speech
Maybe one of Bernanke’s staffers should tell him that a root cause of the crisis is too much credit and lending and that he’d better find some other basis for his “virtuous circle” (actually a ratchetting up of debt). Households are refusing to carry this credit and lending, but Bernanke misunderstands this as households supposedly “repairing theri balance sheets” (as their homes and cars are prepossessed). Its the banks companies that are protecting their balance sheets by throwing Americans into poverty, destitution, and homelessness.
But I suppose Bernanke can always pray for exports. His so-called ” cyclical recovery in employment” appears to have a puncture.
Of course there is always the Weimar/Zimbabwe solution:
In essense Bernanke is saying – don’t look at me to save you, I’ve done all I want to do ….
So he throws the responsibility back onto government processes (which arfe being trashed by T-Party types)
Well he got that right – whatever starts as a ratchet – inevitably ends up in a spiral.
All this simply because we have not found means to control our capitalists who are raking in billions of profits, record profits for some, even as global society as a whole slides into penury.
Now go back and look at our Budget Papers – Statement 2 – “Economic Outlook”. Where is their 4.25% world growth in 2011, and where is there going to be 4.5% world growth in 2012? (p2-11).
Professor Quiggin: I will miss my Marxist diet. Hope you will find time between your writing to post the occasional blog.
@Pol Pot
You have a very low understanding of the term ‘Marxist”.
I’m guessing you were probably educated in ‘Amerika’.
Chris, on this context “marxist” has the synonyms thoughtful, progressive, questioning, non-ideological, intelligent, analytical, educated. All of the things the neocons are not.
You may have heard of the “Lindau meetings”. Below is the web-site from which you can download the presentations by Nobel Laureates at the August 2011 meeting.
http://www.lindau-nobel.org/WebHome.AxCMS
“Economists” – ie, the talking heads on TV from the financial heart of the country who happen to have satisfied requirements on obeisance to the efficient markets hypothesis – nevertheless violate it every time they rail about ‘inflexibility’ in the labour market. Don’t they know that efficient markets employ workers until the marginal value product = the effective wage rate? More flexibility lowers the effective wage rate, therefore MVP is lower and less productive workers employed, therefore average labour productivity falls. Strangely, they all seem to argue that higher wages cuts employment, an implication of their theory, but they don’t acknowledge the other implication…
Something to do with class interests overcoming analysis???
(JQ’s ‘No hard and fast rules for workers’ suggests the ubiquity of the herd mentality afflicting mainstream economics)
@John Nightingale
For other than TV economist talking heads see the web-site.
@Chris Warren Professor Quiggin needs to send you to a reeducation camp.