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Arabica Robusta

Bourdieu on neoliberalism - 0 views

mondediplo.com/08bourdieu

bourdieu neoliberalism theory

shared by Arabica Robusta on 16 Oct 10 - Cached
  • Without a doubt, the practical establishment of this world of struggle would not succeed so completely without the complicity of all of the precarious arrangements that produce insecurity and of the existence of a reserve army of employees rendered docile by these social processes that make their situations precarious, as well as by the permanent threat of unemployment. This reserve army exists at all levels of the hierarchy, even at the higher levels, especially among managers. The ultimate foundation of this entire economic order placed under the sign of freedom is in effect the structural violence of unemployment, of the insecurity of job tenure and the menace of layoff that it implies. The condition of the "harmonious" functioning of the individualist micro-economic model is a mass phenomenon, the existence of a reserve army of the unemployed.
  • Economists may not necessarily share the economic and social interests of the true believers and may have a variety of individual psychic states regarding the economic and social effects of the utopia which they cloak with mathematical reason. Nevertheless, they have enough specific interests in the field of economic science to contribute decisively to the production and reproduction of belief in the neoliberal utopia. Separated from the realities of the economic and social world by their existence and above all by their intellectual formation, which is most frequently purely abstract, bookish, and theoretical, they are particularly inclined to confuse the things of logic with the logic of things.
  • All direct and conscious intervention of whatever kind, at least when it comes from the state, is discredited in advance and thus condemned to efface itself for the benefit of a pure and anonymous mechanism, the market, whose nature as a site where interests are exercised is forgotten. But in reality, what keeps the social order from dissolving into chaos, despite the growing volume of the endangered population, is the continuity or survival of those very institutions and representatives of the old order that is in the process of being dismantled, and all the work of all of the categories of social workers, as well as all the forms of social solidarity, familial or otherwise.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Like it or not, the public interest will never emerge, even at the cost of a few mathematical errors, from the vision of accountants (in an earlier period one would have said of "shopkeepers") that the new belief system presents as the supreme form of human accomplishment.
Arabica Robusta

Economics, the soulful science | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...soulful_science_4369.jsp

shared by Arabica Robusta on 18 May 08 - Cached
  • I believe (as I argue in my book The Soulful Science) that economics offers a uniquely powerful way of thinking about society, and how individuals make choices in their social context. Other approaches, those of the other social sciences, or history or literature and music, are valid too - I feel no need to dismiss them. But only economics with its choice-based models emphasises the opportunity costs and trade-offs that inevitably arise from the social and physical realities of our existence.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 18 May 08
       
      Perhaps the reason why so many 'non-economists' as well as non-neoclassical-economics are dismissive of neoclassical economics (even of the neoinstitutional sort) is that so many celebrated neoclassical economists combine study of a discipline whose assumptions are relevant only to a very restrictive set of uses, with arrogant and misguided proclamations that neoclassical economics is the savior of the social sciences.
tony curzon price

Reviving the Invisible Hand: The Case for Classical Liberalism in the Twenty-first Cent... - 0 views

www.independent.org/...article.asp

economics religion

shared by tony curzon price on 26 Sep 07 - Cached
  • One of Lal’s most significant contributions to economic science is his recognition of cosmology as a factor endowment. This recognition enriches institutional theory by explicitly introducing religion and superstition into institutional settings and further illuminates the problems of path dependency. There have been great civilizations in the past, but none produced the Promethean growth that came with capitalism. The older agrarian civilizations grew extensively to the limits of their natural resources, but they lacked the innovation and creativity for the kind of intensive growth that capitalism generated. The reason for this lack is not that our ancestors had no instinct for enterprise, but that they were constrained by social norms and communal bonds and, as Lal asserts, by prevailing cosmological beliefs that suppressed individualism.
  • The second papal revolution occurred when Pope Gregory VII asserted the power of the church over that of the king or the emperor in the eleventh century. Lal argues, following Harold J. Berman (Law and Revolution [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983]), that this revolution set in place all the legal concepts and institutions needed for commerce.
  • tony curzon price on 26 Sep 07
     
    economic impacts of religion and vice versa - by Indian economist
mepstein

Is Government Making it Worse? The Evidence Says No | YPNation - 0 views

www.ypnation.net/...king-it-worse-evidence-says-no

Government Politics YPNation Young Professionals Economic Policy

shared by mepstein on 13 Oct 09 - Cached
  • mepstein on 13 Oct 09
     
    Nice debate on government's economic intervention.
tony curzon price

FT.com / Comment & analysis / Comment - The centre-ground's shift to the left - 0 views

www.ft.com/...f7-11dc-af03-0000779fd2ac.html

liberalism libertarianism

shared by tony curzon price on 28 Nov 07 - Cached
  • You can hear the change in what prominent would-be centrists are saying. In the 1990s, when neoliberalism was the centre, the line was: we must slash middle-class entitlements in order to be more competitive in the global free market. Now the line is: in order to save free-market globalism from populists preying on middle-class economic anxieties, we must expand the middle-class welfare state.The winners – at least for now – are welfare state liberals such as old-fashioned New Dealers in the US and their equivalents in other countries. The position of the original “third way” of 1932-68 always made sense. Middle-class social insurance programmes, by guaranteeing economic security, reduce the appeal of populism, socialism and other kinds of ­radical statism, and make possible broad political support for open and competitive national and global markets. You will hear much more of this line as politicians rush to occupy the new centre in the years ahead.
tony curzon price

Global Financial Integrity Project - The Ugliest Chapter in Global Economic Affairs Sin... - 0 views

www.gfip.org/index.php

economics

shared by tony curzon price on 11 Sep 07 - Cached
  • Ten years ago I stepped out of international business and into the think-tank community with a primary goal of getting reality on the table. I had seen more corruption, more money laundering, more financial crime than any one person should see in a lifetime, and I resolved to say what I wanted to say about this overarching reality. Why wasn’t reality already on the table? What is it about this subject matter that is so mysterious or so frightening that we hesitate to go there? Basically is it that we can’t see it or don’t want to see it?
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 11 Sep 07
       
      money laundering / tax evasion .... for an interview
  • This is the reality that we seek to get on the table. Illicit outflows from developing and transitional economies vastly exceed overseas development assistance going into developing and transitional economies. In my estimates, which I and others think are conservative, by a factor of ten to one. More analysis, better analysis in the future may make this a narrower picture or make it a wider picture. But no analysis will make this a pretty picture.
tony curzon price

Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...English

gender

shared by tony curzon price on 11 Sep 07 - Cached
  • What is true in the Netherlands and Europe is true all over the world: reducing the inequalities that exist between men and women is not only a matter of justice; it also makes economic sense.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 11 Sep 07
       
      economic advancement through work is good for women, society and governments ...
  • According to the Dutch historians Tine de Moor and Jan Luyten van Zanden, the early break with patriarchy in Europe in the late Middle-Ages (1200-1500) accounts for the rise of capitalism and growing prosperity in the Western World. Girls were no longer married off, but selected their own spouses. As a result, it became worthwhile for parents to invest in girls’ education and wellbeing.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 11 Sep 07
       
      break with patriarchy accounts for development of capitalism in medieval europe
tony curzon price

Greg Mankiw's Blog: Goolsbee on the Business Cycle - 0 views

gregmankiw.blogspot.com/...oolsbee-on-business-cycle.html

economics equality luck

shared by tony curzon price on 12 Aug 07 - Cached
  • Consider the evidence uncovered by Paul Oyer, a Stanford Business School economist, in his recent paper, "The Making of an Investment Banker: Macroeconomic Shocks, Career Choice and Lifetime Income" (National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 12059, February 2006). Dr. Oyer tracked the careers of Stanford Business School graduates in the classes of 1960 to 1997.He found that the performance of the stock market in the two years the students were in business school played a major role in whether they took an investment banking job upon graduating and, because such jobs pay extremely well, upon the average salary of the class. That is no surprise. The startling thing about the data was his finding that the relative income differences among classes remained, even as much as 20 years later.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 12 Aug 07
       
      path dependency of economy - and whole lives
Susan Thur

The Simpson-Bowles Deficit Hysteria Sideshow Debuts On Fox | OurFuture.org - 0 views

www.ourfuture.org/...t-hysteria-sideshow-debuts-fox

fox news deficit hysteria

shared by Susan Thur on 26 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Susan Thur on 26 Apr 10
     
    The following is part of the "Virtual Summit on Fiscal and Economic Responsibility for People Who Did Not Wreck The Economy." Before the White House deficit commission meets for the first time tomorrow, the two co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson gave a preview on Fox News Sunday.
Rich Bowden

CPRS: A Taxing Question (Part Two) - 0 views

theangle.org/...prs-a-taxing-question-part-two

diigo cprs tax carbon reduction ETS australia

shared by Rich Bowden on 18 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Rich Bowden on 18 Nov 09
     
    It's not enough saying a cap-and-trade system will work in theory. Sure, the underlying economics behind a perfect cap-and-trade system are sound, but it is very unlikely any ETS ever developed will be perfect.
Arabica Robusta

Beyond armistice: women searching for an enduring peace | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...n-searching-for-enduring-peace

war versailles germany human rights women social movements

shared by Arabica Robusta on 01 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • The 1919 Zurich gathering is where the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom first took its name. You could say the League was born out of profound dismay at the unjust outcome of Versailles. A worn old volume is our one extant copy of the report of that conference. Holding it in our hands as we prepared this article, we saw anew just how central had been the women's preoccupation with economic issues.
  • This demoralizing sense of 'no alternative' has impacted on the thinking of the peace and women's movements too. Yet, we are resourced today with factual evidence of the economic oppression and inequality at the root of war, data of a scope and accuracy that the women of 1919 sorely lacked. The UN’s Human Development Report provides us annually with a clear picture of who profits and who lives in poverty.  The recent scandal of the so-called Global Financial Crisis has brought to view hard evidence of the subsidy made available to the financial institutions and individuals responsible, while a hyper-capitalism is imposed upon populations through austerity measures that attack public services, and on labour standards and conditions hard won over decades. Today, given the palpable rivalry of corporate interests and their national backers for control of resources and markets, peace activism can scarcely afford to ignore the causality of capitalism in militarization and war.
tony curzon price

FT.com / Comment & analysis / Comment - Central banks should prick asset bubbles - 0 views

www.ft.com/...92-11dc-84c9-0000779fd2ac.html

economics finance

shared by tony curzon price on 03 Nov 07 - Cached
  • There is a second reason that the hands-off approach has been shown to be wanting. During the past few years, a significant part of liquidity and credit creation has occurred outside the banking system. Hedge funds and special conduits have been borrowing short and lending long and, as a result, have created credit and liquidity on a massive scale. As long as this liquidity creation was not affecting banks, it was not a source of concern for the central bank. However, banks were heavily implicated. Thus, the central bank was implicitly extending its liquidity insurance to institutions outside the regulatory framework. It is unreasonable for a central bank to insure activities of agents over which it has no super­vision, just as it would be unreasonable for an insurance company selling fire insurance not to check whether the insured persons take sufficient precautions against the outbreak of fire.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 03 Nov 07
       
      why the new ways of creating liquidity require new forms of regulation
tony curzon price

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Why immigration is hard to tackle - 0 views

www.ft.com/...a1-11dc-84c9-0000779fd2ac.html

immigration

shared by tony curzon price on 03 Nov 07 - Cached
  • Yet even if one agrees that a country has a right to restrict immigration, it does not follow that it ought to do so. Mr Legrain argues that it is not just in the global interest to have free migration, but also in that of recipient countries. A standard “gains from trade” analysis would suggest that this should be true. But if one is to argue for free movement of labour on economic grounds one needs a sense of the likely consequences. Analyses of free migration in the presence of huge real wage differentials suggest that we would end up with vast informal sectors and shanty towns. That is what happens within poor countries. Why should it not happen across the globe? I cannot see how one would persuade a host population that this outcome would be in their interests.
  • tony curzon price on 03 Nov 07
     
    martin wolf, contra liberal, free movement position
tony curzon price

FT.com / World - Slow take-up of Islamic loans - 0 views

www.ft.com/...ea-11dc-9f68-0000779fd2ac.html

economics finance islam

shared by tony curzon price on 29 Nov 07 - Cached
  • The FSA stressed Britain was at the forefront of developing this market both on the high street with retail products and in the capital markets with the growth of Islamic-compliant bonds or sukuk, which are structured to pay investors profits from an underlying business rather than interest.
Arabica Robusta

Can democracy save the planet? | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...can_democracy_save_the_planet

democracy development international opendemocracy sustainable

shared by Arabica Robusta on 05 May 08 - Cached
  • The questions addressed included: can a world of 9-10 billion people vote its way to a sustainable future - or are new forms of leadership (even forms of authoritarian rule) going to be necessary? Are the rising global powers (China, India and Brazil among them) best placed to move towards more sustainable forms of development?
  • What of the link between democracy and sustainable development? Most respondents held that voter pressure meant that democracy was of benefit to sustainable development. Yet consultation with a more specialised group of experts found that only 28% believed that capitalism (often paired with democracy in its liberal variant) aided sustainable development, against 36% who said that capitalism inhibited it. Overall, Doug Miller saw in the figures an activation of people's survival instinct: as the planet "speaks" through extreme weather events, citizens are starting to listen.
  • Many of the issues the roundtable addressed had been highlighted in a keynote paper commissioned ahead of the meeting from Ian Christie. This made four basic propositions about democracy, ecologically sustainable development, and environmental/sustainability campaign organisations (SD-NGOs). He argued that together, these phenomena offer a paradox about the relationship between democracy, civil society and sustainability; and that resolving it is now an urgent and complex task - for the west, for newly industrialised democracies, and for emergent democratic civil society in the global south.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Democracy poses huge problems for sustainable development. In the advanced liberal capitalist states, democracy is tightly coupled to the promise of economic growth, ever-rising consumption and individual freedom. Democracy in such states now entrenches the interests of the affluent majority and well-funded lobbies in the political system (a point analysed by, among others, JK Galbraith and Mancur Olson).
  • Environmental/sustainability campaign organisations (SD-NGOs) are a massive success for civil society worldwide. Without them, we would not have anything like the progress we have seen in the past half-century in protecting the environment, cutting pollution, raising resource efficiency, highlighting linked issues of environmental and social injustice, and saving wildlife and habitats from destruction. Without them, the discourse and practice of sustainable development would not have become established in governments worldwide, and huge issues such as climate disruption would not have been acknowledged or tackled sufficiently by governments and businesses.
  • SD-NGOs are a massive failure by their own standards. For nearly fifty years they have campaigned and educated citizens and governments and businesses worldwide; yet ecological damage continues on a vast scale, environmental injustices abound, and dangerous climate disruption seems to be unavoidable. SD-NGOs have achieved limited gains in specific areas of policy but have failed to mobilise and energise citizens on a large enough scale to put real pressure on politicians and businesses in the west and beyond. Moreover, they lack clear answers to challenges to their own legitimacy and accountability, and have sometimes spoken as though they were representative voices of "civil society", when in fact they constitute a small and highly unrepresentative section of it in many countries.
  • Arabica Robusta on 05 May 08
     
    a Consultation on Democracy and Sustainability was held at the Science Museum in London on 18 March 2008. It was convened by the Environment Foundation, the 21st Century Trust and SustainAbility, and supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. The questions addressed included: can a world of 9-10 billion people vote its way to a sustainable future - or are new forms of leadership (even forms of authoritarian rule) going to be necessary? Are the rising global powers (China, India and Brazil among them) best placed to move towards more sustainable forms of development? Democracy has a central role to play in any discussion of the future of the planet. But democracy is in trouble in many parts of the world, and must - if it is to deliver, remain relevant and meet people's needs and aspirations - mutate and evolve (see Larry Diamond, "The Democratic Rollback", Foreign Affairs [March-April 2008]).
tony curzon price

Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...English

economics images

shared by tony curzon price on 26 Nov 07 - Cached
  • Ultimately, consumer and business confidence are mostly irrational. The psychology of the markets is dominated by the public images that we have in mind from day to day, and that form the basis of our imaginations and of the stories we tell each other.
tony curzon price

Xenophon, Works on Socrates - 0 views

www.perseus.tufts.edu/...ptext

aspasia economics feminsim socrates xenophone

shared by tony curzon price on 16 Dec 07 - Cached
  • tony curzon price on 16 Dec 07
     
    "When a sheep is ailing," said Socrates, "we generally blame the shepherd, and when a horse is vicious, we generally find fault with his rider. In the case of a wife, if she receives instruction in the right way from her husband and yet does badly, perhaps she should bear the blame; but if the husband does not instruct his wife in the right way of doing things, and so finds her ignorant, should he not bear the blame himself? [12] Anyhow, Critobulus, you should tell us the truth, for we are all friends here. Is there anyone to whom you commit more affairs of importance than you commit to your wife?" "There is not." "Is there anyone with whom you talk less?" "There are few or none, I confess." [13] "And you married her when she was a mere child and had seen and heard almost nothing?" "Certainly." "Then it would be far more surprising if she understood what she should say or do than if she made mistakes." [14] "But what of the husbands who, as you say, have good wives, Socrates? Did they train them themselves?" "There's nothing like investigation. I will introduce Aspasia to you, and she will explain the whole matter to you with more knowledge than I possess. [15] I think that the wife who is a good partner in the household contributes just as much as her husband to its good; because the incomings for the most part are the result of the husband's exertions, but the outgoings are controlled mostly by the wife's dispensation. If both do their part well, the estate is increased; if they act incompetently, it is diminished. [16] If you think you want to know about other branches of knowledge, I fancy I can show you people who acquit themselves creditably in any one of them."
tony curzon price

BBC NEWS | Business | Paragon hit by finance problems - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7103254.stm

economics

shared by tony curzon price on 20 Nov 07 - Cached
  • "Such conditionality gives rise to a material uncertainty related to events or conditions, which may cast significant doubt on the group's ability to continue as a going concern," Paragon said. Scaling back Paragon's comments came as it reported record profits of £91m for the year to the end of September, up nearly 10% on the previous year.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 20 Nov 07
       
      so what happens to the bonuses?
tony curzon price

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Welcome to a world of runaway energy demand - 0 views

www.ft.com/...23-11dc-8981-0000779fd2ac.html

economics energy

shared by tony curzon price on 16 Nov 07 - Cached
  • The big strategic questions concern energy security and the shift in the balance of power towards unattractive regimes, be they Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad’s Iran or the House of Saud’s Arabia.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 16 Nov 07
       
      maybe the oil-rich _become_ unattractive
tony curzon price

Performance-pay Perplexes: Financial Page: The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...071112ta_talk_surowiecki

economics incentives

shared by tony curzon price on 14 Nov 07 - Cached
  • The havoc on Wall Street following the collapse of the subprime-mortgage market boils down to a simple truth: for years, lots of very smart people took lots of very foolish risks, betting borrowed billions on dubious mortgage derivatives, and eventually the odds caught up with them. But behind that simple truth is a more surprising one: the financial whizzes made bad decisions in part because that’s what they were paid to do. Not literally, of course. The way that hedge-fund managers and investment-bank C.E.O.s get paid is supposed to make them perform better for the investors they serve. Hedge-fund managers, for instance, typically are paid “2 and 20”: they get two per cent of total assets as a management fee, and they keep twenty per cent of their investment gains (above some agreed-upon benchmark). Letting hedge-fund managers keep a chunk of their winnings gives them an incentive to do well for their clients: in theory, they get rich only if their clients do.
  • tony curzon price on 14 Nov 07
     
    how performance contracts lead to high risk outcomes
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