Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Is Margaret Thatcher Responsible for Silicon Valley, As David Brooks Claimed Recently?

[T]he myth of the welfare state fostering a lazy citizenry just doesn’t hold water. A group of small nations (combined population: about 25 million) that came up with Linux, Skype, Ikea, H&M, and Lego — to say nothing of well-written television shows and mystery novels, innovative designers and brilliant architects from Alvar Aalto to Bjarke […]

Shorter Niall Ferguson

Shorter Niall Ferguson. Keynes was so  totally gay that he would never write about Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. update: Ferguson has apologized very fully,  firmly denouncing his comment on Keynes, sexuality, and time horizons. I’m sure that Ferguson will retract, in the long run, all he’s said.

Court approval

Common Dreams points us to an aspect of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court most of us have probably not followed: A secret federal court last year did not deny a single request to search or electronically spy on people within the United States “for foreign intelligence purposes,” according to a Justice Department report this week. […]

Trans-Pacific Partnership and US European Union free trade

Via Naked Capitalism comes more comment on two major global trade agreements also discussed here at Angry Bear. I keep wondering when our national conversation will get around to acknowledging ‘pro-business’ as having a second question to answer: which businesses mostly benefit and which lose out? And a third: what are the rules of free […]

Pro-business decisions

New York Times points us to a new study on the Robert’s Supreme Court decisions and ‘pro-business’. NOT long after 10 a.m. on March 27, a restless audience waited for the Supreme Court to hear arguments in the second of two historic cases involving same-sex marriage. First, however, Justice Antonin Scalia attended to another matter. […]

The Lessons of the North Atlantic Crisis for Economic Theory and Policy

Re-thinking macro policy: Joseph Stiglits, Davis Romer, Oliver Blanchard at  Columbia University, New York, and co-host of the Conference on Rethinking Macro Policy II: First Steps and Early Lessons. The Lessons of the North Atlantic Crisis for Economic Theory and Policy Posted on May 3, 2013 by iMFdirect   http://blog-imfdirect.imf.org/ post by: Joseph E. Stiglitz In analyzing […]