Admired in the West but loathed by his countrymen as a harbinger of Russia’s post-Cold War misfortune, Mikhail Gorbachev fully grasped the immense challenges of reforming the ailing Soviet Union. Today’s Russia largely reflects the anti-Western grievances stemming from his failure.
Reading
Antitrust expert Hal Singer shows how big businesses in certain industries are taking advantage of inflation worries to jack up prices far beyond their cost increases, all the while raking in robber-baron profits.
Microeconomist Hal Singer studies the topic on everyone’s mind: prices. Singer, who teaches advanced pricing at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business and frequently serves as an economic expert in antitrust litigation (often concerning how firms set prices), says that those who hold workers’ wages responsible for inflation are not only wrong but making the problem worse with policies that fail to hit the real mark.
The latest data from the Bureau of Statistics on families shows that more than ever before couples with dependants are both working.
The post Families change but the same problems remain appeared first on The Australia Institute.
Has the solution to global tensions been waiting at home all along?
First created in the midst of World War II, the Bretton Woods agreement collapsed in 1971, yet its legacy is still with us. Senior Economist Paulina Restrepo-Echavarria explains why.
Gas companies in Australia made up to $40 billion in windfall profits in the last year due to the war in Ukraine, and global price spikes. There are growing calls for a windfall profits tax to claw back some of these war profits, to fund essential services in Australia. This was recorded on Tuesday 18th
The post It’s a No-Brainer! appeared first on The Australia Institute.
Let’s crack open one of my favorite cookbooks from my collection, Benson & Hedges 100’s Presents Drink Recipes from 100 of the Greatest Bars (1979). Don’t you love the cover? My little eye spies a Martini, a Daquiri, and a Long Island Iced Tea. Since I decided to feature this book on Facebook and InstagramContinue reading Benson & Hedges 100’s Presents Drink Recipes from 100 of the Greatest Bars: Traffic Light (1979)
Why The Window To Prosecute Trump Is Closing
Donald Trump is not above the law. He must be prosecuted — to preserve what’s left of our democracy.
Trump spent years evading the consequences of his actions thanks to the wealth he accumulated from his empire of scams.
Now, he’s counting on his political power to shield himself from far more serious crimes.
Every day we wait to hold Trump accountable only emboldens him — and others like him — to wreak havoc on our Constitution and the rule of law.
Diamond-Dybvig-Bernanke is a flawed model of banking that has no room for a lender of last resort
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2022 to Ben S. Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond, and Philip H. Dybvig for having “significantly improved our understanding of the role of banks in the economy, particularly during financial crises” (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 2022a).
The main justification for Diamond and Dybvig's (DD) award is given by a paper published in 1983: “In an article from 1983, Diamond and Dybvig develop a theoretical model that explains how banks create liquidity for savers, while borrowers can access long-term financing” (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 2022b, p.4).
A short exposition of the model
New analysis shows Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) producers reaped up to $40 billion of windfall profits in FY 2021-22 thanks to soaring global gas prices due to the war in Ukraine. The research comes following a damning report from the ACCC into the gas industry around price-fixing and subsequent condemnation of cartel-like behaviour on the
The post Gas Giants Reap $40 Billion in Windfall War Profits: Report appeared first on The Australia Institute.
No sign here that the rate hikes have slowed growth: This is what has been hurting their currency: This series is showing signs of slowing, perhaps due to working from home:
The post Industrial production, EU trade, miles driven appeared first on Mosler Economics / Modern Monetary Theory.
UPDATE: Wow The UK has submitted Hassan Nazer’s Winners as its entry for best international feature at the Oscars. Nadira’s first feature film as Producer, Winners, won the Audience Award for best film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival to our (frankly surprised) delight. It will play in London at the Raindance Film Festival on […]
The post Winners at Raindance appeared first on Craig Murray.
The production of death under capitalism is well understood. Innumerable terms and theoretical formulations exist to define the endpoint of capital’s immiseration, the one constant…
A how-to guide for academics who want to have their name on lots of papers.
The post How To Be an Academic Hyper-Producer appeared first on Economics from the Top Down.
There’s a popular belief that capitalism succeeds because it enables the best product in any industry to survive, while the poorer products lose out. There’s also a popular belief that the market leads to “lock-in”: an inferior concept will come to dominate a product space, and improvement becomes impossible because all subsequent developments are forced … Continue reading "How Capitalism Kills Good Software"
I’ve just released Chapter 3 of my open access e-textbook on homelessness. This chapter focuses on rough sleeping and encampments. A summary of the chapter can be found here (in English): https://nickfalvo.ca/rough-sleeping-and-encampments/ A French version of the summary can be found here: https://nickfalvo.ca/dormir-a-la-dure-et-les-campements/ The full chapter can be found here: https://nickfalvo.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Falvo-Chapter-3-Rough-sleeping-and-encampments-12oct2022.pdf All material related to the e-book can be found [...]
The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed the way Americans spend their time. One of the most enduring shifts has occurred in the workplace, with millions of employees making the switch to work from home. Even as the pandemic has waned, more than 15 percent of full-time employees remain fully remote and an additional 30 percent work in hybrid arrangements (Barrero, Bloom, and Davis). These changes have substantially reduced time spent commuting to work; in the aggregate, Americans now spend 60 million fewer hours traveling to work each day. In this post, we investigate how people spend this saved time on other activities. Using detailed data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), we find that employed individuals allocate their saved commute time toward leisure activities and sleeping, while reducing overall work hours.
Ponce Bank, founded in 1960 in the Bronx and currently New York’s only Latino community bank, shows the possibilities of lending as a mutual bank.
When foreigners hold on to U.S. banknotes, those dollar holdings essentially become an interest-free loan to the U.S. government.
David Swallow and Chris Faint Policymakers have been investing heavily, to an accelerated timeline, to better understand the financial risks from climate change and to ensure that the financial system is resilient to those risks. Against that background, some commentators have observed that the most carbon-intensive sectors may be subject to the greatest increase in … Continue reading Capitalising climate risks: what are we weighting for?
We are delighted to announce that No Enemies No Friends: Restoring Australia’s Global Relevance has been longlisted for the inaugural Australian Political Book of the Year Award.
The post The Australian Political Book of the Year Award 2022 longlist: No Enemies No Friends appeared first on The Australia Institute.
In our third episode, Duncan and Mark dive into the 1997 sci-fi noir, Gattaca. Duncan skips out on the squirmy bits, but both our podcasters ultimately complete the viewing of this underrated film with a sense that the eugenicist strive to perfection that so often infiltrates the thinking of tech companies is perhaps not a
The post Gattaca appeared first on The Australia Institute.
The respected National Integrity Committee of former judges has welcomed the Government’s NACC legislation but warned that the exceptional circumstances prerequisite for public hearings would undermine the public interest without further amendments to the Bill, in their submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the Bill. Integrity Committee member and former Supreme Court Judge the Hon.
The post NACC Exceptional Circumstances Restriction Should be Lifted: Retired Judges appeared first on The Australia Institute.
The Chubb Review into Australia’s scandal-plagued carbon offsets system might not provide the reset needed for the carbon market given the potential conflicts of its members, its timing in relation to other climate reforms and by distracting from more effective emissions reduction policies, according to a submission by The Australia Institute.
The post Chubb Carbon Offsets Inquiry – Conflicted, Too Late & Missing the Point appeared first on The Australia Institute.