A post of genuine interest (rather than just stimulating of the desire to bash my head against my computer screen) on the Adam Smith Institute blog today. Sara Williams, who normally specialises in extraordinarily one-eyed monetary/macro commentaries, has drawn our attention to a paper by Peter Leeson of George Mason University in Virginia in which […]
Should anyone really be interested – my doctoral thesis ‘Money and Production – A Pluralist Analysis’ is now available from the University of Stirling document repository at https://dspace.stir.ac.uk/dspace/handle/1893/1141 It examines various theories of money’s origin and sustainability, both ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’, and analyses the link between money and real economic outcomes. Most of it is […]
I note a considerable amount of interest in some ideas by Chris Martenson – who has a website and offers tutorials entitled ‘The Crash Course’. He suggests that the current way we are living is unsustainable and we’d better start preparing for when it all goes pear-shaped (which will be pretty soon according to him). […]
Moody’s threatened to downgrade Spain’s debt yesterday. Why do we pay any attention to anything they, or the other ratings agencies, say? In conclusion, I have tried to show that Moody’s managers deliberately engineered a change to its culture intended to ensure that rating analysis never jeopardized market share and revenue. They accomplished this both […]
If the financial sector can be rescued only by cutting back social spending on Social Security, health care and education, bolstered by more privatization sell-offs, is it worth the price? To sacrifice the economy in this way would violate most peoples’ social values of equity and fairness rooted deep in Enlightenment philosophy. Superb, if lengthy […]