Harry's Place

Guest post by Andrew Murphy
In the 20th century, two economists stand out: John Maynard Keynes and Frederich Von Hayek. As I have argued on Harry’s Place in the past, Hayek is still misunderstood by both critics and advocates alike. This misunderstanding applies equally to Mr. Keynes, perhaps even more so.
There are certain things [...]

Leading conservative writer Jonah Goldberg, an old coot beyond his years (43), thinks the current voting age in the US (18) is too low because young people are “so frickin’ stupid about so many things.”
(The voting age in most American states was 21 until it was lowered by Constitutional amendment in 1971.)

Personally, I think the [...]

I don’t know if any of our readers are fans of the TED talks that are posted on YouTube and are supposed to disseminate “ideas worth spreading.”
But there was one recent talk– by billionaire venture capitalist Nick Hanauer– that didn’t make the cut. Hanauer’s topic was income inequality, and TED “curator” Chris Anderson considered it [...]

As a Krugmanist critic of the belief in economic recovery through austerity, I was pleased with the election of Francois Hollande (who advocates a more balanced approach) as president of France.
However there is a darker side to all this– as we saw when Greece’s Golden Dawn party, led by the sinister Nikolaos Michaloliakos, won seven [...]

Greek President, Karolos Papoulias has instructed on the formation an interim government in advance of a second parliamentary election will have to be called following the inconclusive one of 6 May.
The only two parties whose combined seats could have reached the 151 seats required for a majority Coalition were the centre-right New Democracy and [...]

The bank JPMorgan Chase has lost $2 billion (which is a lot of money to some of us) in a trade gone bad.
JPMorgan Chase said Thursday that it lost the money in a trading group designed to manage the risks that it takes with its own money. CEO Jamie Dimon said the bank’s strategy was [...]

I had mixed feelings when watching the first episode of The Town Taking On China last night on BBC2, featuring erstwhile Conservative mayoral candidate for Liverpool, Tony Caldeira in his efforts to return his upholstery factory to Kirkby in Merseyside from its current location in Hangzhou, China.
His stated aim is laudable enough. To collaborate [...]

Now that Socialist Francois Hollande has been elected president of France, two great questions come to mind:
1. Will he be able successfully to reverse Sarkozy’s austerity program, reduce unemployment and produce sustained economic growth?
2. Is the woman at the left of the photo playing the clarinet and the accordion at the same time?

If anyone still believes that a nation’s journey to economic recovery requires a grim slog through fiscal austerity– and there may be such people even after the news that Britain has slipped back into recession despite (or because of) the Cameron government’s cutbacks– I recommend a reading of Paul Krugman’s latest column in The New [...]

It appeared to be one of the more callous suggestions for boosting economic output: that scrapping bank holidays could result in an additional £19 billions.
Thus, with between just eight and 10 public holidays in the UK (depending on area), it seemed designed to squeeze yet more pleasure out of a stressed and poorly rewarded workforce.
Yet, [...]