The IMF states the obvious (pdf) - even if we've not yet fully taken it on board. First, and quite simply, governments should make sure that existing programs are not cut for lack of resources. In particular, central governments or sub-national governments that are facing bala...
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Although people endlessly ask for predictions, they rarely really want the answers. It was only late too late in life that I realised that when people said, We really want you to challenge our ideas, they mostly did not. They wanted instead to be congratulated on their wisdom....
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After uncomplainingly sitting through two episodes of Brideshead Revisited earlier this evening (even, I confess, with a degree of appreciation I didn't feel on first viewing 25 years ago), the prospect of backing up for Mansfield Park was a bridge too far, despite the lusciou...
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Time for a bit of economic navel gazing. What does the global financial crisis mean for the state of economics in the early part of the twenty first century? Pass? Conceded Pass? Fail? Well at the end of 2008, for all the talk of the search for stability from economists we sti...
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I feel quite angry with Pope Benedict message that "saving homosexual or transsexual behaviour was as important as protecting the enviornment" and that "God's creation was about protecting man from himself". Even some of my own grand children, who are devoted catholics, feel t...
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Nostalgia. It just gets better with age .
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Well, even reading against the grain of MSM reporting , the Archbishop of Canterbury seems to be throwing caution and Godwin's Law to the winds auditioning for the role of turkey this Christmas. Dr Rowan Williams risks causing a new controversy by inviting a comparison between...
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I've previously written - at least a couple of times - so I was interested to see this post from Greg Mankiw who sent a request from a reader seeking advice on good international development charities to development economist Michael Kremer. The strongest candidate in his lett...
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From 3Quarksdaily for which I think Ingolf for telling us about, a great article on Obama which in one way is far from starry eyed about him and his political methods, but ends in what can only be called a fantasy on the theme that the presidency is just a stepping stone to bi...
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In the days before the Americans turned him into a cuddly economic stimulus package, Santa led a much more exciting life. Today he lets even the naughtiest children sit on his lap and demand Nintendos, ipods and mobile phones. He listens politely and promises to do what he can...
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No real surprises here! (pdf) Abstract: Cross-culturally, male economic power is directly related to reproductive success. Displays of wealth and social status are an important part of human male mating effort. The degree of male financial consumption may be related to varianc...
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Guest postlet by Troppodillian Paul Hobson. This week news of the death of an Australian serving with the British forces in Afghanistan came as Kevin Rudd visited Australian troops. As Britain prepares to withdraw its troops from Iraq, Simon Jenkins asked in the Guardian why a...
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When this was written for ABC Unleashed in June] the ALP ruled in Canberra and in all the states and territories, not necessarily wisely and well, but in some cases by wide margins. The situation in mid 1965 was very different. Menzies had been the PM for as long as many peopl...
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Since I lived in a group house with him, I've stayed in touch with David Evans and discussed various issues - mostly economic - via email with him. As a result I get the odd group email from him setting out his views on greenhouse in which he argues that an ETS is a stupid ide...
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Architecture of the Heart No's 1, 2 and 3. For more follow this link.
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Henry Blodget was a Merrill Lynch tech analyst during the tech bubble. A bubble he rode to fame and then to a Spitzer investigation and oblivion. In this piece in the Atlantic he gives a great analysis of what he thinks caused the current housing and debt bubble and draws the...
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I suggested Governments should be countercyclical investors in asset markets in a speech in 2002 (pdf) and now smarter people than me think it's a good idea. Like Nobel Prize winner Michael Spence and John Muellbauer of Oxford Uni and Martin Wolf who references the other two....
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The RBA minutes confirm two things that were discussed in the press at the time of their last meeting. It was on the 2nd Dec (that is a few months after it had become apparent that the world was facing the greatest financial crisis since the great depression and that the devel...
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It always seemed to me that it was hard to think of anything more Australian than having a long weekend for Anzac Day, or not putting one's hand on one's heart during the playing of the national anthem. But it's all changing and not only are the odd hands going on hearts, but...
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Today's Fin op ed follows up on some of the aspects of the fiscal stimulus that a bunch of us economists proposed the weekend before last. Do it now or pay the price In the 1980s Joe visited George, who had a temporary appointment in India. A last minute snafu when Joe was lea...
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Read all about it here , or over the fold. The US Naval Observatory operates 70 cesium atomic clocks. Credit: USNO If you ever feel like you need more time, here's some great news: you're actually going to get it. On December 31, 2008 a leap second will be added to the worlds...
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The one thing most people now agree on is that this global financial crisis is exactly that, that it is a crisis. It is very serious, historically significant in its size, global in its reach and at a time when countries are more vulnerable to global problems than ever before,...
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Time for more reflections on the financial crisis, starting with seeing whether my predictions of two months ago have come true, followed by observations on a new set of unexpected twists, and rounded off by a set of policy recommendations for how to reduce the severity of the...
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It's good to have the apology out of the way. It was such a horrible distraction, the failure to apologise such a monumental act of ungenerosity. Nevertheless, and despite its frequent tendentiousness, and despite its ridiculous lumping together of apologies to Muslims for the...
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What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today. Why isn't anything going on in the senate? Why are the senators sitting there without legislating? Because the barbarians are coming today. What's the point of senators making laws now? Once th...
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Warren Buffett emailed this note to the directors of his company, Berkshire Hathaway on Tuesday after he heard that the U.S. Treasury sold $32 billion in 4-week bills at a yield of 0%: This should be bullish for Berkshire. With great foresight, I long ago entered the mattress...
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Qinghua Pei is being investigated by ICAC for allegedly trying to bribe a Year 5 teacher to write a favourable report on his son, and improve the boy's prospects of getting into a selective high school. What is the appropriate reaction to this? Here are a few to choose from: 1...
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A wry look at the arguments that are mounted to defend the bailout of the US car industry. Strictly speaking, a part of the US car industry that is failing, not the robust part that is doing OK. "Too big, too important to lose". The same could have been said of the US piano in...
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HT: Slate, via Paul Krugman
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One of the things George Akerlof was thinking about as he wrote his famous paper on the market for lemons was the market for low skilled labour. The idea that lemons avoidance is a big part of the story of poor demand for low skilled workers has always struck me as very powerf...
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In a world rapidly sinking into a grand funk, with nothing going right for overpaid CEOs, for US Auto workers, for the climate, for climate scientists, for denialists, for the US (apart from Obama), for the sales of SUVs and large cars, for the US, UK and Europe, for Afghanist...
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Well, kind of. I'm on his list of people who receive his Christmas e-mail complete with his speech to the Australian Business Economists Annual Forecasting Conference in Sydney on December 9, 2008. It's below the fold. AUSTRALIA S OUTLOOK FOR POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT IN 2009 Ac...
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UPDATE, 24 December: Many thanks for the nominations so far. We have enough to get started on, but would love to double the number. Therefore, we're extending the deadline to 10 January! But please post your nominations sooner rather than later, so we can get on with the judgi...
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One of the recommendations that I think of as most important in the Review of the National Innovation System is one that will cost next to nothing. As a result, it costs next to nothing. We spent a fair bit of our time focusing on the question of how we could accellerate innov...
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Sara Macliver ....the best Pinchgut ever! I didn't really expect it to be. Though I admired their courage in picking such an obscure and, at first blush unsuitable, work, it seemd inconceivable that it would be as rapturously beautiful as, say, L'Orfeo or The Fairy Queen . But...
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I offer no guarantees as to the accuracy of this article by Bill Ayres the 'unrepentant terrorist' whom Obama was supposed to be 'palling around with' , but I thought it was interesting and others might like to check it out.
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Some interesting pieces in The Australian Literary Review , 3 Dec, the insert that comes in the paper on the first Wednesday of the month. Richard Lansdowne wrote on the courage of Alexander Solzhenitsyn which he suggests made him the greatest writer of the 20th century. I am...
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This diagram is a scatter plot of lagging PE ratios against subsequent market performance. Amongst other things it demonstrates the wisdom in hindsight of Alan Greenspan's first warning about 'irrational exhuberance' which his subsequent utterances seemed to repudiate. Real re...
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Ben Bernanke and Paul Kruman have written on the dangers of deflation and the implicit importance of some level of inflation. Generally this has been in the context of dealing with a liquidity trap. Ken Rogoff has a different angle suggesting that "a sudden burst of moderate i...
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Here's an open letter to the Prime Minister proposing further stimulatory measures by the following signatories which is receiving some coverage today. Tony Cole, Saul Eslake, Allan Fels, Rod Glover, Nicholas Gruen, Ian Harper, Tony Harris, Mike Waller Dear Prime Minister, We...
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A good while back I put up a post on all the ways I liked Platinum Capital . I hope some of you were suitably convinced to have invested. Just as Kier Neilson (the firm's founder) made his name in the 1987 crash, this is how Platinum international fund has performed recently....
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I'm not always in favour of the kind of argument defended here - it all depends on context, intent and, as the author says, whether it's offered as the start or the end of a conversation - but the case for this style of argument is well put by Chris Dillow at Stumbling and Mum...
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"La Somme le roy", circa 1300, via Wikipedia I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women. 2 Samuel 1:26 (English Standard Version) What better definition could you ask for of '...
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In a fit of what some Troppodillians will now know to be rather typical hot headed enthusiasm, I recently pontificated about the best blog post I'd seen in the year . Well it has a sequel , which is also worth reading. And I laughed out loud when I got to this part of the argu...
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Civilization and the evolution of short sighted agents , Date: 2008-11-19 By: Basuchoudhary, Atin Allen, Sam Siemers, Troy We model an assurance game played within a population with two types of individuals -- short-sighted and foresighted. Foresighted people have a lower disc...
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Today's column in the Fin. There are three arms of macroeconomic policy. There are the two in the economics textbooks monetary and fiscal. And theres a third, Australian, arm of macroeconomic policy, or there could be with a bit of lateral thinking of which more in a moment. T...
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Thank you, Rafe, for sending me the October 8 article by Ergas. There is also a new article in todays Australia -- http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24730487-7583,00.html?from=public_rss I was originally looking for hard evidence - that Kevin Rudd is alleged to hav...
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