Friday, Jan 27th 2012
Dan O’Brien argues that abandoning the four year plan to reduce the deficit to 3% of GDP by 2014 would be insanity (Irish Times Oct 21 2010). He is wrong.
The cosy policy consensus that Dan shares with Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour, if implemented, will damage our economy and society. Ironically it will also [...]
Sam Nolan at 80 from conormccabe on Vimeo.
This is an eighteen-minute video which was made for the occasion of Sam Nolan’s birthday celebration in the Mansion House, which was held on Friday 8 October 2010.
The video is drawn from over eleven hours of Sam in conversation with Mick O’Reilly, former Irish secretary of the ATGWU [...]
An extract from The Sceptics Bible. Part 518 of 666.
IN the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God.
2 Even though Wittgenstein has proved the impossibility of a private language.
3 All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made.
Yanis Varoufakis, “First as History, Then as Farce: The Euro Crisis Revisited”
Yanis Varoufakis, professor of political economy at the University of Athens, provides an excellent guide to the foolishness of the EU's European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF):
The Geithner-Summers Plan which created from scratch a new type of financial instrument that allowed US banks to remove [...]
Inequality kills « Real-World Economics Review Blog
Where does this leave us?
The results of all these studies (including Saunders and Gordon) are clear. Inequality increased during the last decades – but surely not everywhere. (France is, according to Gordon, a clear exception). Inequality is, beyond any doubt, statistically connected with social pathologies like large differences in [...]
Policy Network | New comparison poll shows how vulnerable and ideologically staid European social democracy as a political movement currently is.
Policy Network have published a new opinion poll tracker of Europe’s social democratic parties:
"After the bruising defeats inflicted upon social democrats in Sweden, the UK, Germany, The Netherlands and the historic slump in the [...]
There’s something tragic about a great power in decline. Many on the left today take it for granted that America should serve as their political punch bag. But the US was once a landmass upon which great political dreams were projected. A new land - a wealthy and prosperous land, with a solid democratic, anti-imperialist [...]
Rick Wolff | “Why France Matters Here Too”
The French strikes and demonstrations are coalescing around some basic demands that go far beyond the rejection of Sarkozy's demand for a two-year postponement of retirements for French workers. Contrary to so many US media reports, that particular issue was never what brought out millions of demonstrators [...]
Wolfgang Münchau | This stability pact obsession is not helpful
FT's Wolfgang Münchau explains why the reforms being discussed at the moment do not even begin to deal with the roots of the crisis and because they are avoiding changing anything there is every reason to believe it will happen again.
"The eurozone thus ends [...]
Doug Henwood of Left Business Observer also has a regular radio show Behind the News on WBAI, New York, covering economics and politics which is always worth checking out. The podcasts are archived on the LBO site, but ILR readers might be particularly interested in the latest one, from the 23rd of October, which includes [...]
