Posts Tagged Global Financial Crisis
Keynes vs. Hayek: round 2 “Fight of the Century”
Another brilliant EconTv video from Keynes and Hayek. This time, the stage is as a Congress House Committee to analyse whether or not the US stimulus package was a good thing after all. Predictably, Keynes argues on the basis of ‘managing’ volatile markets with low information, whilst Hayek argues for more humility, saying that the economic system is complex, and so far better to let individual economic agents decide where, when and how to spend, rather than ‘the few’ in the government to do this job. Fascinating stuff:
More BOOM and Bust!
Well, given recent events in global markets, it’s about time that the coolest, hippest rappers of modern economics put their pens back to the page and fired up the beat-box! If you haven’t seen the first installment of Boom and Bust then watch that first. … It will make this update all the more fascinating. … Though, as my good friend and co-author, Dr Ben Waterhouse aptly says, you can’t get much better than the line in the first rap where they manages to rap “invective” and “Austrian perspective”!
I.O.U.S.A.: The Movie
Posted by sangus in Health, Sustainability on 27 April, 2009
Watch a 30min version of the high-impact documentary that aims to reconfigure the way that government fiscal decisions are made in the US. Will it have an impact? Time will tell.
In any case, makes for interesting watching, especially if you consider the ‘balanced budget’ criterion for many developing countries when it comes to developmetn assistance.
The IMF says 1.4% Contraction for Australia in 2009: Can we afford it?
It seems to me that the recent discussion and alarm about the world economic recession has somehow got itself unhinged from the basic importance of the matter. For instance, take this plot:
From the BBC’s report, ‘Deeper’ recession ahead says IMF’. The text around the figure goes like this:
Whilst this is all interesting stuff, it actually gives us only half the story on global economic activity. From this report, there is no way that you can determine what is happening on the ground in these countries, or for that matter, on the lovely planet called Earth.
Read the rest of this entry »
Lessons from the GFC for the GEC
Posted by sangus in Development, Podcast on 7 April, 2009
I was recently prompted by James O’Loghlin (host of Sunday’s with James O’Loghlin program on ABC Local radio, Sydney) to think about solutions to both the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) and the GEC (Global Environment Crisis). What he was after, was a discussion of solutions that would solve both problems at the same time .. the old, ‘two birds with one stone’ approach. On the surface of things, this sounds like an impossible task: when one thinks about the hardship that is still building in world economies due to rising unemployment, shouldn’t we be thinking only of fixing up the economy? Shouldn’t we wait until ‘better times’ return for us to then worry about the environment. I mean — the dangers of climate change and its associated dooms-day predictions are important, but surely not that important to rank them above the pressing troubles of the now?
Whilst I’ll write some more on the solutions side of things later, my first thought was not actually ’solutions’ as such, but to do with lessons that we can take from the one to the other.