Sunday, April 26, 2015

Economics and Politics

So I've been meaning to write a post about economics and where we are as a nation because of the massive gap between the media narrative and the reality. This disconnect has huge policy implications.

Even though over the last 6 years, I have become a firm Keynesian in my thinking, I would not claim to be an economist. I would however claim that reading and accessing the relevant information is an option open to anyone interested.  For reference I would recommend the following 3 books:

End the Depression Now! by Paul Krugman [Nobel Laureate]
The Price of Inequality by Joseph Stiglitz [Nobel Laureate]
Austerity, the History of a Dangerous Idea by Mark Blythe

I had composed a blog entry, trying to encapsulate the argument and I'd got to 2500 words so it wasn't exactly pithy. Then I discovered Simon Wren-Lewis, Oxford Professor and much more qualified than me to comment had put together a nice little series of blog entries that summed this up beautifully. So as well as being more qualified to say it, he'd said it better than me.

So, please read these:
uk-mediamacro-myths-introduction.html
mediamacro-myth-1-2010-britain-faced.html
mediamacro-myth-2-labour-profligacy.html
mediamacro-myth-3-2007-boom.html
mediamacro-myth-4-immediate-necessity.html
mediamacro-myth-5-long-term-plan.html
mediamacro-myth-6-2013-recovery.html

AFZ

P.S. I just want to point out that history will (rightly, IMHO) laud Gordon Brown for his handling of the crisis. History will not be kind to either Cameron or Osborne.

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