Club Troppo

There are important lessons to be learned from the Great Depression but I have the impression that the left emerged with the view that the New Deal was required to save the US from rampant capitalism. There is an alternative account . For an MP3 version of the story . The New...

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The Myer Foundation's 'Cranlana' Program is named after Sidney Myer's magnificent Toorak home where the program holds a range of functions. I attended one of these when I was working at the BCA. I remember doing the reading for it before hand and thinking it was going to be aw...

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From today's AFR column. Go early, go hard, go households. This slogan, coined by Treasury Secretary Ken Henry in discussions on the fiscal stimulus takes me back. To another time long, long ago. Flashbacks are better suited to the silver screen than newspaper columns, but ima...

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When debating this issue, John Quiggin ( September 27, 2008 ) made the claim that neo-liberalism had failed (relative to social democracy). Paul Frijters ( recent Club Troppo piece ), on the other hand, dismisses the topic as largely irrelevant. One reason for this disagreemen...

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"Goodbye and f.... you!" A hemp-inspired comment maybe? This came out of the farewell letter from Andrew Lahde, manager of a small California hedge fund, Lahde Capital, which recentlyreturned 866 percent betting against the subprime collapse. He has retired to live the good li...

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The Australian Skeptics Prize for Critical Thinking has been won this year by Peter Ellerton, a Queensland teacher who established a network promoting critical thinking in schools. The prize is worth $10,000. For a decade up to 2006 it was awarded as a part of the Australian M...

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(Written in response to a question from an ANZ customer, who sent me a copy of an open letter to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the IMF, from Martin Weiss, Chairman of the Sound Dollar Committee, urging him to resist government interventions in the financial syst...

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I was sufficiently taken with this piece in the Fin that I asked it's author Peter Cebon of the Melbourne Uni Business School if I could republish it here. Were told that the root cause of the current financial crisis is a few regional financiers selling dodgy mortgages to poo...

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It has been a busy time for academic economists in the past few weeks. Every lunch break has been dominated by talk about all the goings on in the markets and the government plans that are coming thick and thin. We are trying desperately to remain more knowledgeable about the...

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This is an invite to an exhibition at the Jewish Museum by someone who is pondering his roots as a descendant of those who experienced the holocaust. I was sent it as someone on the Dunera News mailing list. I think about this myself, not so much in relation to myself, but rat...

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[caption id="attachment_6120" align="alignleft" width="330" caption="Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan leaves the Treasury Building. Courtesy Bloomberg"] [/caption] It doesn't get any easier to give this administration the benefit of the doubt. For a fleeting moment in recent days, it...

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From the Universe Today website. The Cassini mission has released some of the most detailed images of Saturn's poles yet, revealing vast cyclones churning up the gas giant's atmosphere in the north and south. These observations show very similar storms to the south pole observ...

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My take on Krugman's Nobel - from today's Crikey! And there's lots of other views around the blogosphere, not all of whose I've read. Joshua had Krugman as a teacher and his post is a goodie - make sure you read Krugman's interstellar trade theory. Because I don't think I can...

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Though it's late the day, I want to recommend Opera Australia's production of Billy Budd . There are only two performances left -- tonight (Monday 13 October) and Thursday. This is indeed short notice for tonight but, for the spontaneous among you, tickets are only $60 if you...

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Courtesy of a friend Paul, here is an email I received of neologisms from the neologism competition in the Washington Post. Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate mea...

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It's long seemed obvious to me that without large injections of fresh capital, all the other efforts to deal with the ever unfolding financial crisis would prove inadequate. Or even counterproductive . The official debate has finally swung in this direction but the question of...

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People will recall that political economy started out as moral philosophy (a la Adam Smith, Professor of Moral Philosophy) then evolved into the study of national economies, then reverted to the narrower scope of economics, focussed on the idealised "economic actor". For those...

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Regular readers of this blog may remember Neil, the guy who runs a great taxi 'ring' - a group of drivers who cooperate in providing a superior service to the crap you have to put up with from the branded networks of taxis. I really hate their policy of not offering you any id...

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A subject that has mystified me as it's mystified pretty much everyone. I've always guessed he felt it was the best he could get out of Paulson with whom he had to come up with a joint plan. That's what Steve Randy Waldman thinks too - though he suggests a bit more detail - ov...

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