I saw Margin Call today, the Zachary Quinto-produced ensemble drama about one day in the office of an investment firm back in 2008, just as the subprime mortgage crisis was about to explode into everyone's radar.

I don't think I will get around to reviewing it properly, although you can find some of my reactions on my Tumblr. But I do want to say ( Read more... )

Philip Mirowski in The Hedgehog Review, "The Great Mortification: Economists’ Responses to the Crisis of 2007-(and counting)" (via the Heterodox Economics Newsletter):
Lesson 1: This Is What Happens When You Banish History and Philosophy ( Read more... )

Stolen from ghostrunner7:

1. Grab the nearest book ( Read more... )

Deadwood, seasons two and three especially, is like watching Polanyi's "Great Transformation" in action.

'To sum up. The countermove against economic liberalism and laissez-faire possessed all the unmistakable characteristics of a spontaneous reaction. At innumerable disconnected points it set in without any traceable links between the interests ( Read more... )

Vincenzo Ruggiero (2000) 'The Fight to Reappear,' Social Justice, 27.2:

Acceptance of the status of illegality is a nonwritten requirement that allows for the selection of the most desperate among migrant workers - those who are prepared to "disappear." In this sense, it could be argued that the strengthening of border controls is not meant to ( Read more... )

It would be interesting, wouldn't it, to look at the United States' war on drugs and the narcotics trafficking between South and North America, and try to work out the extent that it was the product of the US's role in driving down prices of agricultural exports from the South (eg. sugar, coffee), often to below production cost, since the 1980s. ( ( Read more... )

Bee Wilson in The New Yorker:
'In his “Essay on the Principle of Population,” of 1798, the English parson Thomas Malthus insisted that human populations would always be “checked” (a polite word for mass starvation) by the failure of food supplies to keep pace with population growth. For a long time, it looked as if what Malthus called the “dark ( Read more... )

Animated statistics that won't make you sweat:

Click to view

There's loads more fascinating TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talks at YouTube.

The above presentation by Hans Rosling can also be found at gapminder.org.

Christopher Hayes | What We Learn When We Learn Economics (In These Times)

But when equity and efficiency trade-offs do arise, economists like Sanderson are systematically biased in favor of efficiency because that’s what they are experts on. Efficiency they can measure and analyze. Fairness? That’s the turf of philosophers and politicians. This ( Read more... )

Woke up to an interesting ECOP society email linking to the website of the Autisme-Economie movement, which was started by students in France in 2000. Their object: economic pluralism and a fundamental reform to the way economics is taught in universities. Post-Autistic Economics (PAE) has since grown into an international political economy ( Read more... )