Here's something I only noticed while writing a short piece for INTHEBLACK magazine : the rise of globalisation is not only slowing down almost to a halt, but in some places (like the Netherlands) may have been slowing down since around the turn of the century. That's well bef...

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Someone sent me this article by Keynes celebrating the Arts Council in the Listener shortly after World War II had been won in Europe. A world away, and worth a read. JMKeynes_Listener1945

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I followed a link on the site of a complexity theorist I know to this story by Ben Allen on this interesting site (which is mostly about complexity theory). Anyway, this story is not about complexity theory. It's about innocently dropping some kids off in a black neighbourhood...

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Everyone is charging into print on the smoking ruin that the Europeans will be leaving Greece after the latest barely believable debacle in which the newly elected government Syriza, after receiving the overwhelming support of its electorate to reject the punitive terms of the...

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[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="620"] Intriguingly there are two substantial permanent monuments to Magna Carta at Runnymede. Both are American. This one was erected by the US Bar Association in 1957.[/caption] I was recently asked to participate in a panel discussion...

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When I hear very serious people talk about confidence I often smell a rat. It's such an amorphous thing and impossible to observe directly. Clearly there are times when it matters a lot, but I suspect it matters most at points of extremity, not most of the time. We've had the...

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The Iranian Revolution of the late 1970s meant a huge shift in Middle-East politics and the relation between Islam and the rest. Within a period of just a few months, the ancient civilisation of Persia went from a strong ally of the West, to a committed enemy of Western intere...

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The deal yesterday morning between the Greek PM and the Eurozone Finance ministers is an agreement to reform before talks. By tomorrow evening, the Greek parliament has to accept 4 pieces of legislation on a large range of issues (pensions, labour markets, taxation), after whi...

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Despite the fact that Federal Labor has consistently led in opinion polls over the last year or so by between four and six percentage points, most pundits (including the writer) have very little confidence that Labor will win the next election. In fact I expect they will more...

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I've had a request that … people put a break in their posts further up - ie with less of the whole article on show. Seems like a fair suggestion, so I'm 'putting it out there' as my daughter sometimes says.

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As Greece's situation has gone in recent days from bad to worse to worser to even-worserer-than-that, I've seen a lot of claims that the European authorities treated Greece's private creditors too generously back in 2010-2012. My natural tendency was to accept those claims, pa...

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The Greek referendum and the hype leading up to it have gone exactly according to my script of 8 days ago , where I predicted a resounding ‘no’ vote and a Grexit to stop the bank-run, with the other European politicians too offended and belittled by Tsipras and Varoufakis to o...

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I don't have much time to offer anything very considered but want to just say how bemused I am at the carryings on of Syriza. The whole sorry business has been horrible to watch with creditors showing no interest in their own self-interest let alone a little enlightenment in t...

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