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

Can Spain Achieve What Ireland And Latvia Did?

From Social Europe Journal comes more analysis of using Ireland as the standard success story for austerity (re-posted with permisson from the author and SEJ): Can Spain Achieve What Ireland And Latvia Did? BY RONALD JANSSEN Advice from a ‘very serious European’. Picking up on the IMF’s report on the Spanish economy and its call […]

Les Misérables

Via Alternet comes this quote from Victor Hugo in Les Miserables: Victor Hugo described this war with the poor in Les Misérables as one between the “egoists” and the “outcasts.” The egoists, Hugo wrote, had “the bemusement of prosperity, which blunts the sense, the fear of suffering which is some cases goes so far as […]

Ireland, Krugman, Kenneth Thomas

Paul Krugman points to Angry Bear Kenneth Thomas in this piece in the New York Times on the use of Ireland as somehow a success story of what are failed policies regarding employment: Ireland Is The Success Story Of The Future, And Always Will Be Via Mark Thoma, Kenneth Thomas analyzes the latest attempt to […]

CORRECT PREDICTIONS AND THE STATUS OF ECONOMISTS

Vis Brad Delong’s post on CORRECT PREDICTIONS AND THE STATUS OF ECONOMISTS Paul Krugman is certainly right that history has judged, and that the judgment of history is for James Tobin over Milton Friedman so completely that there is not even a smudge left where Friedman’s approach to a monetary theory of nominal income determination […]

“Chicago issues RFP for more charter schools”

As my Chicago friend Mike (doodahman) points out in Facebook, the City has just issued RFPs for additional Charter Schools. This comes after Chicago Public Schools closed 50 schools throughout the city causing students to travel farther and over crowding other schools. The Chicago Teachers Union sees it as a union busting tactic and predicted […]

Austerity sinks all boats

July 31 saw the latest release of European Union unemployment numbers, and Monday’s gross domestic product figures brought no joy, especially for Greece. As Think Progress reports, Greek unemployment hit a new record of 27.6 % in May, while Spain’s June unemployment figure was 26.3%, according to Eurostat. As the world’s biggest experiment in austerity, […]