Saturday 15 June 2013

The economy, the truth.


As claimed  in the post below, , the neo-con propaganda machine has been so successful that even the Labour Party, in a desperate bid for credibility,  seems now to have acknowledged that they made a mess of the economy when in office.

The truth is very different and is spelled out with more authority than I have in this blog by Simon Wren-Lewis, an economics professor at Oxford:.




If you have an hour to spare , then this lecture by Mark Blyth is a scathing indictment of the neo-con myth, and covers the world economy, rather than just Britain.

It's brilliantly delivered, apparently without notes (though with too many "colloquialisms" for my prudish liking.) There weren't a lot in the audience, which is a shame.

 Blyth also written a book: "Austerity: the history of a dangerous idea," for those who need more time to absorb the details.



PS (Added 17/06/13)  This article by William Keegan in yesterdays Observer gives further and better partiulars of the British case.  It begins:


Has the Labour party thrown in the towel? Are rightwing commentators correct in claiming that recent speeches by Ed Miliband and Ed Balls amount to surrender? Given the strength of Balls's compelling case against the coalition's austerity programme – from that prescient Bloomberg lecture in August 2010 onwards – the news that Labour intends to stick to the coalition's spending plans for 2015-16, essentially acquiescing in a policy it had successfully ridiculed, is disturbing, to put it mildly.



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