Global Surpluis Recycling Mechanism (GSRM)

Yanis Varousfakis talks of different aspects of it in his nook 'The Global Minotaur'. One aspect from a recent article in The Guardian "In his recent book The Global Minotaur, Varoufakis claims that the notion of a surplus recycling mechanism is simple in theory and revolutionary in its implications. It was first devised by Keynes while working as an unpaid policy adviser to the British Treasury during the early 1940s. The proposal was an outgrowth of Keynes’s frustration with the limits of the gold standard during the 1920s. At that time there was an outflow of gold from Britain to the US to pay for Britain’s trade deficit. Logically the inflow of gold should have expanded the money supply in the US, increasing the competitiveness of UK exports. But the US adopted policies to offset inflationary pressures. As the economist Marie Christine Duggan has suggested, the harsh lesson for Keynes was that the gold standard was ineffective at forcing creditor nations to increase domestic prices or reinvest their surpluses. Creditor nations were free to hoard as they liked, placing the burden of action on debtor nations who had very little choice but to act in ways that tended to depress their domestic economies.Keynes’s proposal for curbing the problem was to create global rules that would place equal pressure on both creditor and debtor nations to adjust their respective trade imbalances, helping to ease the burden shouldered by debtor nations."
From a post of Michael Pettis, surpluses may not be good even for creditor countries:
" Far more interesting to me is the impact of the indemnity on Germany. From 1871 to 1873 huge amounts of capital flowed from France to Germany. .... As money poured into Germany the German economy boomed, along with German consumption, investment (a growing share of which went into projects at home and abroad that turned out in retrospect to be overly optimistic), and into the Berlin and Viennese stock markets. By early 1873 more experienced German, Austrian and British bankers were quietly warning each other of a speculative mania, and they were right. The stock market frenzy culminated in the 1873 global stock market crisis, which began in Vienna in May, shortly after the beginning of the 1873 World Fair,... "

Happy Valentine Day

http://scroll.in/article/706033/Hold-your-horses-Kejriwal-hugging-his-wife-will-not-start-a-love-revolution

"Europe after the minotaur"

by Yanis Varoufakis is freely available online (need to register). Also on kindle
2013 interview about the original book "The global minotaur-America, Europe and the future of the global economy"

Different versions of 'Tum Bhulaye Na Gaye'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAo506wXYz0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QhJ-DT214g
And when she was nearly 70 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNkTRanbZa4&feature=youtu.be

Links, 11th February, 2015

Highlights of the AAP manifesto (via Madhukar Shukla)
AAP sweeps Delhi, but Modi and BJP won't make life easy for Kerjiwal
Shanti Bhushan unhappy with Kerjiwal
The model of development through industrialization is on its way out from The Economist (via MR)
Millions of Facebook users have no idea that they're using the internet
Why Ernesto Laclau is the intellectual figurehead for Syriza and Podemos (via Jo)
University in Greece: the cradle of politics from Open Democracy
Who do I admire most? by Noah Smith How about Abdullah Ocalan?
The future of the left by Ursulla K. Le Guin
Making drug research quicker and cheaper
About a century-old viral therapy (via Ed Yong)
You can't play 20 questions with nature and win from MindHacks

Review of a Hilary Clinton book

We came, we saw, he died in London Review of Books by Jackson Lears. Excerpts:
"The intellectual bankruptcy of the Democratic Party is nowhere more evident than in the looming presidential candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton.....These conventional formulas stress Clinton’s exceptionalist faith in America’s unique responsibility for ‘global leadership’. There was a time when this meant leading by example, but since the Second World War, the phrase ‘global leadership’ has served as a euphemism for military intervention – multilateral if possible, unilateral if necessary. Indeed, exceptionalism has proved a durable justification for unilateralism. Presidential candidates from both parties have long felt obliged to pay homage to the exceptionalist creed, but Clinton’s attachment to it is obsessive. She says she wroteHard Choices ‘for anyone anywhere who wonders whether the US still has what it takes to lead’. She recalls Madeleine Albright’s threadbare interventionist slogan: the US, Clinton insists, remains ‘the indispensable nation’. As secretary of state, she acted on her faith by sponsoring the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya and advocating US intervention in Syria, not to mention engineering the Asia Pivot towards increased US involvement in the Far East."
"Clinton’s exceptionalism promotes an implicit double standard that separates the US from the rest of the world. Consider the Asia Pivot: according to Clinton, ‘we needed to send a message to Asia and the world that America was back’ in its ‘traditional leadership role in Asia’ – managing competition, fostering co-operation, maintaining stability. This was ‘forward-deployed diplomacy … borrowing a term from our military colleagues’. The Chinese perception, naturally enough, was that the US was determined to block its rise. Why China shouldn’t claim a ‘leadership role’ in its own part of the world, and the US should, is one of the mysteries of the exceptionalist faith."
" ‘For the West, the demonisation of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one,’ he wrote last year. ‘Putin is a serious strategist – on the premises of Russian history. Understanding US values and psychology are not his strong suits. Nor has understanding Russian history and psychology been a strong point among US policymakers.’ Clinton seems likely to continue that tradition."

Another analysis of Euro area's problems

Syriza and the French Indemnity of 1871-73 by Michael Pettis
via Michael Pettis explains the euro crisis(and some others things, too) by Matthew Klein.

" This is literally the best analysis of the euro area’s problems we’ve ever read. You should take the time to closely read the whole thing yourself. We’ll wait. " is what FT Alphaville said. I read it once, got some glimpses but not full understanding. Planning to browse some Pettis books.

Chris Dillow on micro and macro efficiencies

In Micro efficient, macro inefficient
"All this poses a question. What sort of economic system does the idea of micro efficiency but macro inefficiency lead to?

We can discount the social democratic option. We know now - as Keynes did not - that macroeconomic policy within market capitalism is not sufficient to create full employment, perhaps for reasons identified by Kalecki or perhaps because capitalists capture the state; still less does it solve the faults alleged by Marxists. Nor am I attracted to the participatory planning of the sort advocated by Robin Hahnel; it seems like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. This leaves some form (pdf) of market socialism and economic democracy. "

The last links have freely downloadable books.

Some Perumal Murugan links

C.S. Lakshmi describes two sequels to 'One part woman' and writes "Seeing how much his novel was liked in the last four years, one has to look for other reasons for this sudden outburst by incendiary forces which were literally baying for his blood. I remember that he began writing his novel Pookkuzhi when the papers were full of the tragic death of a youth named Ilavarasan following his marriage and the caste-hatred it created in Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu. Pookkuzhi is dedicated to Ilavarasan, the Dalit boy who dared to marry an upper-caste girl. Not much was written about Pookkuzhi and the dedication did not go down well with many.
Before Pookkuzhi too, Murugan had spoken his mind on what caste meant to him. When his mother died he wrote two beautiful articles (which were translated into English by me for a SPARROW newsletter), where he wrote about how he had decided not to use the caste graveyard for his mother although he had paid the caste tax for it all these years in three different villages. He felt that he was in no mood to face the catechism of his community about his life and choices. He chose to use the electric crematorium. He says in that article that watching the smoke rise in the electric crematorium he felt it would take his mother, who had toiled all her life, to lands she had never been to. He had disregarded his community many years ago also, when he decided to marry a woman of his choice who did not belong to his community. His entire village had risen against him and had decided to excommunicate him. His progressive friends stood by him and prevented that from happening."
Meanwhile
"The Madras High Court on Tuesday said that it will issue a notice to writer Perumal Murugan so that he could narrate the sequence of events following which he changed his stance.

The first bench comprising Chief Justice Kaul and justice Sundaresh expressed large concern in extra judicial groups wielding power in deciding what is right and what is not right and asking authors what to write and what not to write."

Though the practice has one out many years ao, one Niticentral artilce claims "If left uncontested it means their temple going womenfolk would be fair game for lewd comments and unwanted advances. " Another review favourable to the book says "evolution left men with more sexual anxieties than women. They have addressed this anxiety by seeking power over women. TheMathorubhagan episode has the flavour of insecure patriarchy gone berserk."

Paul Mason on basic income

The thrust of this article is not clear to me.  I lived for four years in an area where many neighbours were provided essential basic income and housing. I saw the next generation not into education or work and vandalizing the neighbourhood. May be one should study such earlier practices in Australia and other places before providing hopeful scenarios. Also what Graeber called 'bullshit jobs' are different from what Paul Mason mentioned here.

Three articled related to Ocalan and anarchism

“dogmatism is nurtured by abstract truths which become habitual ways of thinking. As soon as you put such general truths into words you feel like a high priest in the service of his god. That was the mistake I made.” Ocalan quoted in The new PKK: Unleashing social revolution in Kurdistan 
Rojava, Ocalan, anarchism, and the fight for Kobane
And Happidrome-part 1 by Adam Curtis:
"But the moment you look into what the Kurds are fighting for - what you discover is absolutely fascinating. They have a vision of creating a completely new kind of society that is based on the ideas of a forgotten American revolutionary thinker.

He wanted to create a future world in which there would be no hierarchies, no systems that exercise power and control individuals. And the Kurds in Kobane are trying to build a model of that world."

Diamonds

The article http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/
Apparently largest foreign exchange earner for India  http://www.iimb.ernet.in/research/sites/default/files/WP%20No.%20392_0.pdf
Apparently they have caste too

Two articles on Kobani

What Kobani means to Turkey's  Kurds by Jennna Krajenski from November 8, 2014:
“Kobani today is for Syrian Kurds and Turkish Kurds what Halabja was for Iraqi Kurds,” Barkey told me, referring to the site of Hussein’s chemical-weapons attacks in 1988 against the Kurds. “It’s a stepping stone for national mobilization and nation-building. … Even if Kobani falls, it will strengthen Kurdishness. This was a Turkish miscalculation.”
Kurdish Victory in Kobani Defeat for Turkish Policy by Amberin Zaman in US News, January 29, 2015:
"The recent spate of deadly street battles pitting pro-PKK Kurds against their pro-Islamist rivals in the town of Cizre on the Iraqi border is widely seen as an ominous spillover from Kobani. Such pan-Kurdish sentiments pose a dilemma for Ocalan, who insists that Turkey’s Kurds do not want a separate state."

Globalization and the left

"While nothing can prevent globalization of production, there is nothing that states this globalization need take a neoliberal form. Globalization takes a neoliberal form because, even as globalization undercuts the nation state, the Left insists on relying on the nation state to counter neoliberalism. The very institution the Left relies on to fight the neoliberal impact of globalization is the one most fatally compromised by globalization itself.

It is not that Left parties have to water down their radicalism as they move closer to power; they have to devise a radicalism that is not dependent on the old state machinery. This task still lies in front of them." from The historical context of Greece's election.

The French African connection

Al Jazeera documentary in 3 parts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZKHZVVRITY (France's Thirst for Energy)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOM59Ty9yX8(The Elf Scandal)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOambdQnCdw (Turning Tables)
A short summary here. 

From Nastik 1954

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVORa11_0Rw&feature=youtu.be
Memsaab write up http://memsaabstory.com/2008/03/08/nastik-1954/

James C. Scott interview

Egalitarianism, the teachings of field work, and anarchist calisthenics via Chapati Mystery. Somewhat long but readable and does not cover the Kurd efforts inspired by Ocalan.

Links, January 17, 2015 (Long reads)

Bringing in people from the cold: Ensuring inclusive growth in India by Rahul Banerjee
Timepass and boredom in Modern India by Chris Fuller (via Chapati Mystery)
A discussion on Culture: A scientific idea "ready for retirement" (via 3quarksdaily)
'anne' links to a 2010 article by Paul Krugman on deflation
A discussion of one of the unconvincing parts of Piketty's Capital. Piketty explains : "I do not believe in the basic neoclassical model. But I think it is a language that is important to use in order to respond to those who believe that if the world worked that way everything would be fine. And one of the messages of my book is, first, it does not work that way, and second, even if it did, things would still be almost as bad." 

Madhukar Shukla on poverty alleviation programs in India

Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZLh-mQzojg
About Madhukar Shukla

A long readable article from Simon Johnson

In the first article below Gabriel Palma said "In other words, in current globalised settings in terms of income distribution“convergence” seems to resemble a compass whose 'magnetic north' has shifted fromaiming at what was going on in the more advance economies, to what has characterisedthe more unequal, more rent-seeking and politically more ‘cosier’ high-middle income ones. "

In The Quiet Coup (2009) Simon Johnson : "In its depth and suddenness, the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets (and only in emerging markets): South Korea (1997), Malaysia (1998), Russia and Argentina (time and again)."
Simon Johnson also talks favorably of his experience in IMF; may be by his time IMF changed its ways to some extent.

Gabriel Palma revisits 'Palma Ratio'

Has the income share of the middle and upper-middle been stable over time, or is its current homogeneity across the world the outcome of a process of convergence? The 'Palma Ratio' revisited
The earlier papers where 'Palma Ratio' is discussed Homogeneous middle vs heterogeneous tails, and the end of 'inverted-U': the share of the rich is what it is all about (2011) and Globalizing inequality: 'Centrifugal' and 'Centripedal' forces at work
A short discussion of 'Palma Ratio' here.:
"He found that the ‘middle classes’ – more accurately the middle income groups between the ‘rich’ and the ‘poor’ (defined as the five ‘middle’ deciles, 5 to 9) – tend to capture around half of GNI – Gross National Income wherever you live and whenever you look. The other half of national income is shared between the richest 10% and the poorest 40% but the share of those two groups varies considerably across countries.

Palma suggested distributional politics is largely about the battle between the rich and poor for the other half of national income, and who the middle classes side with.

So, we’ve given this idea a name – ‘the Palma’ (brilliant eh?) or the Palma Ratio. It’s defined as the ratio of the richest 10% of the population’s share of gross national income (GNI), divided by the poorest 40% of the population’s share. We think this might be a more policy-relevant indicator than the Gini, especially when it comes to poverty reduction."
P.S. Palma also studies the 'upper-middle', the deciles D7-D-9. But his studies are over a short period. I would not be surprised if studies over longer periods suggest different deciles.

More about Perumal Murugan

in Caravan magazine. Boat against the current by N. Kalyan Raman. Excerpt:
"It is a curious paradox that even as progressive Indians would like to abolish the caste system, they have little or no understanding of the lived reality of specific caste groups in their traditional homelands. Even as these communities are stalked and often dispossessed by the forces of modernisation, they remain hostage to the ways of the past that have sustained them for centuries. Will they ever be able to enter a secular future? Perumal Murugan has at least shown us a glimpse of what our collective struggle may be about."
P.S. In defence of the chronicler of Kongu
P.S. I hope that this is not the end  http://www.thenewsminute.com/tamils/485

Links, January, 11, 2005

About the radical Gandhi, some of it new to me : Battlefield Banaras by Ramachandra Guha
Telling Pakistan's story through its cricket Review of  'The Unique Ones' by Osman Samiuddin. Still reading.
Raj Chetty's lecture on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy: A Pragmatic Perspective The article should be out by the end of the month.
Perumal Muruan's Madhorubhagan incurs the wrath of RSS. I just read the translation 'One Part Woman'. It is a very nice book. The above article says " The protests seem to be about the sexual permissiveness described in the book, which is set around 100 years ago at the time of an annual festival in Tiruchengode. " But in the book at one place during a play, the comedian compares Ponna toactree Rukmini of the 1945 film Sri Valli. And at another place we find that she has seen the movie. For a nice review of the film see  http://www.thehindu.com/.../sri-valli.../article3024163.ece
On the 'cancer train' of India's pesticides from Al Jazeera
Visible Work, Invisible Women-Full Tour A video of  P.Sainath's photographs (1993-2002) of rural women and their work.

Vedic stuff making waves again

I am reminded of Aravindhan's remarks quoted at the end of this post. As Mumford says in his review of Kim Plofker's book on Indian mathematics says "Nevertheless,it is much more satisfying,when reading ancient works,to know as much as possible about the society in which these mathematicians worked,to know what mathematics was used for in their society, and how they themselves lived."

From 'Executive Suite' 1954

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcEOsGvT0qA
A review of the movie here : "William Holden only guessed at catastrophe for the company and the nation in a booming 1954 when the net dividend for the stockholders was starting to become the benchmark for the health of the company, not the quality of its goods or services, not how many people it employed or if those employees were able to earn a sufficient living."

Another Emmanuel Todd link

I have been mentioning some of Emmanuel Todd ideas based on a reading of some of his books from the eighties. It seems that are some refinements later mentioned in http://america3.org/2014/06/mike-lotus-meeting-with-emmanuel-todd-in-paris-discussing-todds-current-work-and-america-3-0/
The article has links to a couple of research papers related to Todd's work.

From a comment in this blog

A suggestion from a comment in this blog (in a post on Roberto Calasso):
I just wanted to share as a dalit, apprentice mathematician vexed with the intellectual and socio-religious history of the subcontinent, two books I have found very enlightening:

1. Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe, and
2. Jonardan Ganeri, The Lost Age of Reason: Philosophy in Early Modern India

P.S. This is the sort of reason why I started the blog. To scratch the surface, learnt a bit and once in a while responses come either privately or in comments which help me to learn a bit more. Thanks.

After retirement(and after children settled to various occupations), I have been sending 15 to 20 percent of my superannuation payments to some weaker groups in coastal Andhra. Last year I sent some money to 3 Dalit students and 3 Dalit farmers who wanted to lease some land and farm. The three farmers decided to share it with five others and the students shared it with ten others. That makes me feel optimistic about the new year. I have also been trying to follow up the sanitary napkin program which has been initiated by Arunachalam Muruganantham in Guntur-Vijayawada area, but no progress so far. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arunachalam_Muruganantham

Brian Arthur on complexity economics

Expository essay: Complexity Economics: A different framework for economic thought via Chris Dillow's post "In praise of complexity economics'.
There was a link to an interview with Brian Arthur a few years ago in this blog. In that interview he talked a little about India and China. He also said
 "The U.S.’s competitive position will benefit from globalization, the digital revolution, and its strong position in science and innovation. And barring catastrophes such as pandemics and wars, or severe government bungling, this will continue for several decades."
I feel that US is a bit in the second mode now, mostly self made, because of fears of loss of hegemony. But probably the developing countries will suffer first says Illargi. See also his post The year in 5 narratives.
There will be distress for some time but alternatives will develop, I think. See the recent articles of Pepe Escobar in Asia Times.
See also Emmanuel Todd's article.

Some exhilarating dance moves

In Five exhilarating dance moves that celebrate the traumas of modernity by Ananya Jahanara Kabir asks "But do we realise that many of the dance forms that exhilarate us, either as observers or participants, are born out of the deepest traumas of modernity?"
One of them 

Check also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSCAoE2K81U

Happy New Year

Links, December 31, 2014

Nancy Birdsall on Thomas Piketty and the Developing World:
"Recall that Piketty argues that the dynamic of ever-increasing inequality in capitalist systems is due neither to textbook imperfections and failures of markets nor to failures of economic and political institutions, but is inherent in capitalism’s process of growth itself. The way to control the resulting spiral of inequality is to implement a potent progressive tax policy.......In short, the rich democracies have built a capable and responsive state on the basis of a social contract forged over many decades of social confrontation and political compromise. That they are mature democracies matters. Economic growth has been accompanied by political growth over several hundred years, creating a virtuous political and economic cycle. In the fast-growing emerging markets— including Brazil, China, and India—economic growth over the last two decades has fortified the potential for that virtuous cycle to kick in. Still, in these and the poorer countries of the developing world, the challenge is not, at least not yet, the one Piketty outlines—that an inherent tendency of capitalism is to generate dangerous inequality that if left unchecked will undermine the democratic social state itself. The challenge is the other way around: to build a capable state in the first place, on the foundation of effective institutions that are democratically accountable to their citizens."
This is not clear. The same tendency outlined in the beginning seems to work between countries too: $2 lost for every $1 gained and Poorer countries loose more from profit shifting and this from IMF.

Old friends: Wysockis

Links, December 27, 2014

2014: The year propaganda came of age by Raul Ilargi Meijer
Spectacular real virgin births from BBC
Lada gears up to stay on the road from The Age
Why is Putin buying gold? from CNBC but lot of it may be Russian gold bought with rubles says Tim Worstall.
On Pain from The NewYorker
No ideal husband in Hindu scriptures, an old post by Renuka Narayanan (From the comments, there seems to be one).
I saw a friend doing some thin similar long ago:

And finally what I have been doing for a long time seems to be mixture of a herbaceous border and a kitchen garden https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvIc_0-8Orc

Reading 'Ardor' by Roberto Calasso

An agnostic/atheist most of my life but coming from a Hindu background, I was curious to know a bit about Hinduism. Given my background in mathematics and science, Calasso seemed more understandable than the other books I browsed before. I am halfway through the book and will probably reserve the rest for future reading. It has been very readable so far but it seems to be a book that somebody like me has to take slowly. The chapter on Yajnavalkya, I enjoyed, and may be it is enough for now. There is a lot of fog upon fog but they seem to have thought of every thing possible from cosmos, the very process of thought and meaning and at the same time very aware of the human nature and built an edifice (or edifices) of thought and ritual which still resonates with many today. They started with some developed theories and rituals, probably somewhere in Persia. The changes in the meanings of 'asuras' and 'deavas' suggests (to me, but it is possible there were originally three categories) a dissident group migrated towards India and along the way had enough leisure to develop more and more elaborate theories. May be they were accompanied by by others who sustained them or found local patrons. In the process, the language developed adopted local words and gods, the older gods became more and more minor, the rituals more elaborate and more sacrifices an integral part of the rituals. Anyway this book seems to be a part of a series of books and was in the planning for a long time. In a 2005 article  Roberto Calasso said:
"In fact, one of the arguments of the books is that one cannot fully understand what happened since the beginning of the French Revolution and up to today if one doesn't take into account the very complicated and deep thoughts of the ancient risis on violence and the act of killing, which are both part of their theory of sacrifice. So the book is at the same time a narrative and a tentative reading of the metaphysical texture of modern history. "

May be. But during this process, they were sustained by others who did the hard physical work. And slowly it emerged that physical work was demeaning, I cannot but help feel that right from the beginning the seers took care of themselves with various duties about giving gifts to the priests. The vedic rites are still practiced in some parts, even in the south of India. It has sustained a system of inequality for a much longer period than anywhere else in the world and India still seems unable to get away from that spell. It is possible that there may be some lessons for the modern man in these texts and rituals but it seems to me that they have done enormous damage which is still difficult to undo.

When a monkey saves a monkey

Biblical themes in traditional kalamkari

http://srinivasart.blogspot.in/2012/04/biblcal-themes-in-traditional-kalamkari.html (via Hemantha Kumar Pamarthy)

Some books I liked

Even though I read only a few books this year, it has been more satisfactory reading than before coming to terms with the sort of problems that have been bothering me. A few selections from this year: Piketty's 'Captal21', Emmanuel Todd's books particularly 'The explanation of ideology' and 'The causes of progress' and now 'Ardor' (which I am still reading) by Roberto Calasso. Some of the reviews of Calasso suggest that it is the final book in a whole body of work. But I think it can be read by itself and gives some glimpses of Hinduism to an agnostic like me. Ignore the horrible review by Pankaj Mishra (His review of 'The Namesake' I liked, but he seems to be writing a lot of rubbish) . Two books I read earlier and keep going back to are "The sources of Social power" by Michael Mann and "In an Antique Land" by Amitav Ghosh.
P,S. Some are surprised that I included Amitav Ghosh. I am not the only one impressed by his early work. I think that when he was young, he let things come to him and changed somewhat when he started having opinions. I am not an enthusiast of his later work including 'The Glass Palace'. There is a much better review of Roberto Calasso's Ardor by David Shulman (pointed out by Sreenivas Paruchuri); unfortunately it is behind a firewall.

Ruble problems

From Couterpunch Ruble takedown exposes cracks in Putin defense (via Rao Nagisetty) "The prospect that there may be collaborators and fifth columnists at Russia’s Central Bank should surprise no one. The RCB is an independent organization that serves the interests of global capital and regional oligarchs the same as central banks everywhere. This is a group that believes that humanity’s greatest achievement is the free flow of privately-owned capital to markets around the world where it can extract maximum value off the sweat of working people. Why would Russia be any different in that regard?.....
Like we said, Putin might be a great chess player, but in his battle with the US, he’s getting his clock cleaned. So far, he’s been no match for the maniacal focus and relentless savagery of the Washington powerbrokers. Yes, he’s formed critical alliances across Asia and the world. He’s also created competing institutions (like the BRICS bank) that could break the imperial grip on global finance. And, he’s also expounded a vision of a new world in which “one center of power” does not dictate the rules to everyone else. That’s all great, but he’s losing the war, and that’s what counts. Washington doesn’t care about peoples’ dreams or aspirations. What they care about is ruling the world with an iron fist, which is precisely what they intend to do for the next century or so unless someone stops them. Putin’s actions, however admirable, have not yet changed that basic dynamic. In fact, this latest debacle (authored by the RCB) is a severe setback for the country and could impact Russia’s ability to defend itself against US-NATO aggression."

Yves Smith in Naked Capitalism quotes Dmitry Orlov "….at the moment Putin is pushing on a string. You see, once you staff the central bank with economic liberals trained to follow the dictates of the IMF, and do nothing to shut the revolving door between the central bank and other big banks (after all, if the Wall Street boys can do it, why can’t the Russians?) then why wouldn’t they rob their own people every chance they get, then attempt to use their ill-gotten gains to subvert the political system—just like the Americans have done?"

Keynes in 1933 which I do not tire of repeating "Let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible. Above all, let finance be primarily national'. 

Raghuram Rajan, RBI governor on December 12, "Slow industrial country growth has made more difficult a traditional development path for emerging markets—export-led growth. Indeed, in the last decade, even as China developed on the back of its exports to industrial countries, other emerging markets flourished as they exported to China. Emerging markets now have to rely once again on domestic demand, always a difficult task because of the temptation to overstimulate. That task has become more difficult because of the abundance of liquidity sloshing around the world as a result of ultra-accommodative monetary policies in industrial countries. Any signs of growth can attract foreign capital, and if not properly managed, these flows can precipitate a credit and asset price boom and exchange rate overvaluation. When industrial country monetary policies are eventually tightened, some of the capital is likely to depart emerging market shores. Emerging markets have to take extreme care to ensure they are not vulnerable at that point.

What implications should an emerging economy like India, which has weathered the initial squalls of the “taper tantrums” of the summer of 2013, take away for its policies over the medium term? I would focus on four: 1) Make in India; 2) Make for India; 3) Ensure transparency and stability of the economy; and 4) Work towards a more open and fair global system."

A thumri from different films

Putin's kleptocracy

I thought that generally Putin was ok. But may be I was wrong. Here is a review of a recent book which is apparently heavily supported by documentary evidence. An excerpt:
 "Indeed, in the months since Putin’s invasion of Crimea, it has become fashionable to suggest that the harder-line face that Putin has more recently shown to the world is somehow, once again, the West’s “fault,” that we have provoked Russia into autocratic behavior through our talk of democracy in Ukraine or that—once again—the “reform process” was somehow brought to a halt because the Russians felt threatened by the expansion of NATO or by Western policy in the Balkans.

But after reading Dawisha’s book, and after absorbing the implications of the stories she has so carefully pulled together from so many sources, it is simply not possible to take this argument seriously. Since 2000, Russia has been ruled by a revanchist, revisionist elite with origins in the old KGB. This elite had been working its way back to power since the late 1980s, using theft on a grand scale, taking advantage of the secrecy provided by Western offshore havens, and cooperating with organized crime." (via Chris Blattman and from a comment, the book has a website http://miamioh.edu/cas/academics/centers/havighurst/cultural-academic-resources/putins-russia/index.html )

Two from Brad DeLong

on "Convergence" "Lant Pritchett and Larry Summers are now trying to blow this up: to say that just as the neoclassical aggregate production function is a very bad guide to understanding the business cycle, as the generation-old failure of RBC models tells us, so the neoclassical aggregate production function and the Solow growth model built on top of it is a bad guide to issues of growth and development as well."
Cosma Shailzi's comment : "Also, I will remind you that aggregate production functions make no sense in terms of neoclassical microeconomics "
Prolegomenom to a reading course on Marx

Vijay Iyer on "Our Complicity With Excess"

These are the sort of questions I ask myself when I see many successful Indians abroad working as IP lawyers or for Halliburton...http://aaww.org/complicity-with-excess-vijay-iyer/ "That I humbly ask of you, and of myself, is that we constantly interrogate our own complicity with excess, that we always remain vigilant to notions of community that might, perhaps against our best intentions, sometimes, embrace a system of domination at the expense of others. Can we radically submit ourselves to the pursuit of equality and justice for all? If we choose to call ourselves Asian American, can we not also choose to be that kind of American that refuses to accept what America has been, and instead help build a better America even for others, who might not immediately seem to “belong” to us?"

Links, December 14, 2014

Multiple Modernities by S.N.Eisenstadt
The anthropolgy of financial crises by Psedoerasmus "This is Part 2, continued from “Der Todd des Euro” (Emmanuel Todd on the euro), which critiqued his “anthropological” perspective on Germany. Here I make some observations on the role of social capital in financial crises, with a focus on Germany." But a commenter says that he is not too far from Todd.
Ukraine's frozen war brings dramatic changes to world economy by Anatole Kaletsky
Uruguay takes on London Bankers, Marlboro Mad Men and the TPP by Michael Meurer at Truthout
Business interests vs student interests at Cambridge University

Links, 12th December 2014

Do farmers want GM crops? by Glenn Davis Stone
How much of a winner is India in the trade facilitation agreement? by Jhinuk Chowdhury
Growth slowdowns: Middle-income trap vs regression to the mean by Lant Pritchett and Larry Sumners, discussion in The Economist's View
Democratizing Finance by Fred Block "The scope of this article will be
limited in the following ways. First, this paper will only briefly touch on the urgently
needed reforms to the global financial system that would complement the domestic
reforms described here. Second, the paper will not address reforms to corporate
governance and corporate finances that are a necessary part of any effort to renew the
U.S. economy.Third, the discussion of alternative financial institutions will focus on
the problems of consumer finance, small business lending, innovation, and infrastructure."

Michael Hudson on current affairs

In a July interview with RT "The basic principle to bear in mind is that finance today is war by non-military means."
This December Backfired! "The world’s geopolitics, major trade patterns and military alliances have changed radically in the past month. Russia has re-oriented its gas and oil trade, and also its trade in military technology, away from Europe toward Eurasia.

The result is the opposite of America’s hope for the past half-century of dividing and conquering Eurasia: setting Russia against China, isolating Iran, and preventing India, the Near East and other Asian countries from joining together to create an alternative to the U.S. dollar area. American sanctions and New Cold War policy has driven these Asian countries together in association with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as an alternative to NATO, and in the BRICS moves to avoid dealing with the dollar area, the IMF and World Bank austerity programs."

Despite lot of pressure from USA about nuclear liability bill and for US reactors, according to today's report from The Hindu "The highlight of the meeting — part of an annual summit between the two countries — was the unveiling of a vision statement on atomic energy cooperation, where Russian nuclear agency ROSATOM and the Department of Atomic Energy and NPCIL have agreed to build at least 12 new reactors supplied by Russia over the next 20 years."

Item songs

Special issue 'item' of Motherland Magazine with several articles linking film item sonns to older traditions.

Long article on Angela Merkel

in The New Yorker. Lot of background material but I am not sure about the discussion on Ukraine. According to Emmanuel Todd "But basically, the new German system is based on the annexation of the active population. Initially they were used in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, etc. The Germans reorganized their industrial system using their cheap labor. The working population of Ukraine of 45 million inhabitants, with its well-educated inherited from the Soviet era, would be exceptional grip for Germany, the possibility of a dominant Germany for a long time, and most importantly, with his empire, immediately passing actual economic power over the United States." Here is a little about what has been happening in Poland.

Some criticisms of Emmanuel Todd

Since, I may have some more posts about Emmanuel Todd, I thought that I should start with some of the criticisms.
Evelyn Rawski in her review of "The Causes of Progress" says "The attempt to encompass complex historical changes occur, ring over several centuries in all parts of the globe under one rubric suffers from inadequate data about various regional cultures and an overly simplistic analytic scheme." She gives specific examples from her own area of specialization: China. She also says "The great value of Todd's book lies elsewhere: it forces scholars out of the increasingly narrow specializations in which we tend to spend our lives. We may disagree with Todd's interpretation and his facts, but we can learn a great deal from the structural comparisons he makes. If comparative studies are stimulated by books like this, we may eventually achieve a more satisfactory synthesis to explain the demographic, economic, and cultural changes that are central to the early modem and modem historical ages."

William Roseberry in his review of "The Causes of Progress" (behind a firewall, is even more scathing. He says that the jump from family structures to attitudes leaves much to be desired. But he seems to go easy on Marx in Marx and Anthropoloy.

Lesly Page Moch in his review (again behind a firewall)of "The Explanation of Ideology" says "Problematic sources exacerbate the implausible aspects of the study..."

The above reviews are by academics. I do not know the background of the next reviewers.
Craig Willy in  Emmanuel Todd’s L’invention de l’Europe: A critical summary "Todd’s method is to correlate everything. Though a historian, he is as interested in correlation across space as across time. Did I mention the book is also an atlas? The method in a word: Correlate, then speculate. The “speculate” part is definitely Todd’s weakness. " But he goes on to say "Todd is addicted to the “power” of the prophet. His various books have forecasted: the fall of the Soviet Union (1976), the failure of EMU (1995), the dysfunction of globalization (1997), the decline of the United States (2002), the democratization of the Muslim World (2007), and I probably missed one. Todd has no divine knowledge – he can hedge his bets or be inaccurate, he tends to over-generalize from the news of the day and dismiss things that do not neatly fit into his system – but he has a very solid data-based method, looking at the longue durée, which allows him to be far more interesting and worthy of attention than your standard pundit.". 
The missed one may be about Nicaragua. Check also this review of "After the Empire" and 'Testing Todd':
"This paper has investigated whether the family systems that Todd attributes great explanatory power to for political and educational developments can be
corroborated with other data. This check came from ethnographic data collected in
Murdock’s Ethnographic atlas, translated to country-level data with ethnic
population figures from the Narodov Atlas.
In half the cases, Todd’s family systems can be reconstructed to the ethnographic data from Murdock.....There are also important mismatches in The Explanation of Ideology."

Links, December 6, 2014

Did not see this in the main stream media Why Did USA, Canada, and Ukraine vote against 
condemning Nazism at the UN? (via Naked Capitalism)
Athens 1944: Britain's dirty secret (via Jo)
There is no language instinct by Vyvyan Evans (via Naked Capitalism) whose book 'The Language Myth' is reviewed here
Discussion in Economist's View on why economists are paid so much with a paper by Fourcade and ciollaborators. I read some Fourcade papers on the topic and found her convincing.
Vegetarianism and the idea of untouchability (via Rahul Siddharthan who says "Excellent article by Devdutt Patnaik, until the end where he goes Godwin")

Common Financial Language

In March 2012, Andrew Haldane and collaborators pitched for 'common financial language' and there is a response from SWIFT (written by M.Chisholm and A.Milne) in September 2013, where they explain the difficulties involved. In an April  2014 conference "Alistair Milne, professor of financial economics at Loughborough University, said that creating a single common financial language is not a realistic proposition as the industry does not perceive it to be a priority. “It is the deal that matters, as this is where the profits are made. […] The back-book becomes a secondary issue” said Professor Milne."  A recent report from The Scotsman "Alistair Milne, professor of financial economics at Loughborough University, found even apparently simple terms such as “arrears” or “loan performance” can have different meanings within the same organisation."
P.S. Andrew Haldane seems to be one of those rare species, a good banker. More about him by Justin Fox The regulator who explained the world which also has some links to the above topic.