Month: October 2009

I’ve just been reading an ancient JK Galbraith book. True to Galbraith’s reputtion, it’s packed with little facts and asides. I particularly love the British companies formed in the early 18th century, including one “

for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is

” [p.43]

Nicolas Sarkozy is developing a taste for nepotism. Having already helped his son Jean into political and other positions, he seems now to have abandoned all shame. He’s attempting to give the 23-year-old control of La Defense. Roughly equivalent to Canary Wharf (albeit with less of that entertaining halo of occult conspiracy theories), it’s worth many billions of dollars. The job of running it is no sinecure, and I can’t see much excuse for giving it to the Dauphin like htis.

Philip Pullman writing on Athensius Kircher (in the form of a book review) is a treat, lightly linking him to the post-pomo cultural melange, and the return of magic:

Kircher lived on the cusp between the magical world of the Middle Ages and the rational and scientific world of modernity – as perhaps we do again today, except that we’re going in the other direction. His half-sceptical, half-credulous cast of mind is very much to our current taste.

—

The Wall Street Journal keeps most of its content behind a paywall, so I mostly ignore it. To its credit, though, it is one of the few institutions whose idea of Europe gives near-equal attention to Central and Eastern Europe. [This blog](http://blogs.wsj.com/new-europe/) is one part of that.

—

In a (month-old) interview with Gerry Adams, Johann Hari situates the Troubles within a trans-Atlantic context:

Over the next few years, Catholics in Northern Ireland – stirred by the black civil rights movement in the US, and the dream of Martin Luther King – started to peacefully organise to demand equality…. “There was a sense of naiveté, of innocence almost, a feeling that the demands we were making were so reasonable that all we had to do was kick up a row and the establishment would give in,” he says. But the civil rights marches were met with extraordinary ferocity. Protestant mobs attacked the demonstrators, and then the RUC swooped in to smash them up.

Following this line, the divergent outcomes for the two movements become a case study of the snowball effect of political choices. Also of the distortions of hindsight, which tends to elide the violent parts of the US civil rights movement, and the peaceful elements of Irish republicanism.

Le Monde Diplomatique is in deepening financial trouble

Qiu Xiaolong is a bestselling Chinese author of crime thrillers. But his depictions of Shanghai as a city of crime and corruption haven’t gone down well with the authorities.

Philip Pullman writing on Athensius Kircher (in the form of a book review) is a treat, lightly linking him to the post-pomo cultural melange, and the return of magic:

Kircher lived on the cusp between the magical world of the Middle Ages and the rational and scientific world of modernity – as perhaps we do again today, except that we’re going in the other direction. His half-sceptical, half-credulous cast of mind is very much to our current taste.

I’m intrigued by [Daniel Davies’ suggestion](http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/2009/10/hell-freezes-over-yes-folks-its-last.html) that what the recession shows that economists should steer clear of talking about anything other than the economy itself. In the era of Freakonomics they “abandoned the study of production, consumption and exchange”, in favour of “awful amateur-hour sociology”.

In spirit, although perhaps not explicitly, this runs counter to one of the other big currents of economic punditry I’ve lately been bombarded with. Parts of the French media, [Esprit](http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2009-06-08-esprit-en.html) and [RiLi](http://revuedeslivres.net/articles.php?idArt=351) for instance, have been pushing behavioural economics as the solution to all that ails economics. In this view, economics failed by concentrating too much on rational behaviour — they couldn’t see the bubble-inflating irrationality driving companies and traders, so they failed to predict the inevitable collapse.

It’s theoretically possible to have both these views — to argue that economics should take lessons from sociology and elsewhere in order to understand the markets, but avoid themselves dabbling in social problems. In practice, though, won’t the blending of sociology and economics always cut both ways?

The Wall Street Journal is, judging by its website, one of the few media organizations to pay serious attention to Central and Eastern Europe. It’s mostly paywalled, alas, but there is at least a dedicated [blog](http://blogs.wsj.com/new-europe/) for us shallow-pocketed types.

Wikileaks seems to be getting a steady stream of German political documents, at the moment particularly concerning coalition talks. Unfortunately I’m no longer following German politics closely enough to figure out the backstory and meaning of the leaks.

I’m yet to find a decent analysis of the Greek election a week ago, which gave the centre-left Pasok Party their [largest victory ever](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/world/europe/05greece.html).

Since my knowledge of Greek politics is limited to a vague awareness of [last winter’s riots](http://jimjay.blogspot.com/2008/12/guest-post-greek-fire.html), I’m stuck with not-particularly-informative media pundits. For starters, it seems nobody even has any idea why the election happened. The ruling ND party could have continued for another couple of years, but instead called elections that everybody expected them to lose. Why?

Was it because Prime Minister [Konstantinos Karamanlis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kostas_Karamanlis) wanted out, on a personal level? (Many of his ministers didn’t want the election). Is there some impending disaster that he’d rather see blamed on the opposition? Or just that the recession will be painful, and it’s easier to dump that on Pasok?

The other question is why the centre-left won, when across the rest of europe they’re simultaneously disintegrating. As far as I can see the answers have little connection to Europe, or even to the dubious virtues of Pasok. The only international element is the economic collapse. Beyond that, it’s all Greek: the corruption, the unpopularity of Karamanlis, anger over December’s protests. Or something completely different, for all I know.

[normally when I write about something I know nothing about, I find myself learning a little in the process. Not this time]