http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-crisis-of-capitalism :: Here’s a good video from RSA Animate in which David Harvey shows the nonsense of capitalism in its current form. He’s coming from a Marxist perspective but don’t let that put you off. His description of the inherent flaw in finance capitalism is good and, as usual with RSA Animate, the graphics are…
http://www.pieria.co.uk/articles/hounding_the_poor :: Here’s a good article from Frances Coppola on the idiocy of the tax credit system – a cack-handed attempt at distributing spending money to people who don’t get enough of it passing through their hands every week. As Frances says at the end of the article, a universal basic income is the only…
Freaking Unbelievable
Steven D. Levitt is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and co-author of a series of books that have the word “Freakonomics” in their titles. Until yesterday I had never read anything by Mr Levitt, and heartily wish that I hadn’t bothered to read this article on his blog because its stupidity…
Very encouraging to see Martin Wolf in the Financial Times talking seriously about full reserve banking. His proposals for are a step in the right direction but are only part of the solution. They highlight a set of additional underlying problems that also need to be addressed. He takes no account of one of the main…
Blowing Bubbles
Yesterday The Telegraph reported on the current house price boom. The average asking price in England and Wales is more than £262,500 – 7.3% higher than it was 12 months ago. For those of us who struggle with the concept of cumulative growth 7.3% doesn’t sound like a very big number but if you do…
Anyone who’s encouraged by George Osborne’s claims of having steered the UK through the stormy waters of recession into a period of growth that’s “the largest in the G7” needs to read this piece: Comparative Recovery from Flip Chart Fairy Tales. Personally I don’t think GDP is a very useful measure of economic performance but…
Even in the USA the debate about universal basic income is coming out into the mainstream. Here’s a substantial piece on PBS News Hour in which people from right and left talk of the advantages of UBI. Not much discussion about how to fund it but that will come, I’m sure.
Crazy Money: How The Rich Get Richer While The Rest Of Us Get Deeper In Debt
This is a first attempt at drawing a picture of how our crazy money system works. I hope that it helps you to see how money moves through our economy and why we are condemned to fall forever deeper into debt unless we change the way that we use money. Apologies for the quality of…
Here’s another video from Positive Money for those of you who have yet to catch on to the fact that our financial systems are dysfunctional by design. I know lots of people find this stuff dull but if we don’t change the ways that we use money then the financial crises will keep coming, one…
Splendid stuff from Jim Sillars on the currency options in an independent Scotland. He’s scathing about the SNP’s choice of a currency union with the remainder of the UK and argues his case with commendable clarity. It’s encouraging to see a well-known politician getting to grips with the substance of an issue and expressing his…
Views From The Boatshed 