Articles

Two FT pieces by Tracy Alloway caught my eye this week: this article from Tuesday’s print edition, and this post on Alphaville today.

In his two-tome, 1400 page Dutch Leerboek der Staathuishoudkunde (Textbook of Economics), first published in 1884, Nicolaas Pierson (1839 - 1909) accuses the great Scotsman of being a communist – or at least of consciously clearing the way for the socialists with their ideal of a communist society.

The Political Economy of Debt

Bailout, Default, or Plan C

Further Thoughts

War Reparations, or Prosperity

I was just amused with two projects by Shaun Usher: to “gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos” in his blog Letters of Note, and to present interesting letterheads in his Letterheadyblog.

The Bretton Woods conference has a protean character.Talk in the corridors asks “what is it?” Some in the press (lots of press here) believe that deals are being made, the attendance of heavy hitters leads some to believe that consultations and strategies are being outlined for world government (Summers, Stiglitz, Brown, and yesterday Volcker arrived to close the event).

We have been talking and video interviewing people at the conference, and we’ve narrowed down a small list of questions which we try to build on and have so far talked to Kenneth Rogoff, Brad DeLong, Ha-Joon Chang, Stephen Ziliak, Philippe Aghion, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Barry Eichengreen and tomorrow we start with James Galbraith.

A Money View