A Forsterian summary might read: “The bubble burst, people became cautious and the economy got stuck in too low a gear to stop prices and interest rates from falling.”
—The Economist, in ‘The Japanification of bond markets’
Tag: Economy
The inescapable trilemma of the world economy
Dani Rodrik dubs “the inescapable trilemma of the world economy”.
In a globalised world, a country can have economic integration, the nation-state or democratic politics, but not all three fully.
—The Economist, in ‘The tension between globalisation and democracy’
It can choose integration and the nation-state but give up democratic control to technocratic, supranational institutions. It can choose integration and democracy, but give up the nation-state and disappear into supranational government. Or it can choose the nation-state and democracy by embracing impoverished autarky.
The American obsession
At the root of this is American obsession with self-reliance, which makes it more acceptable to applaud an individual for working himself to death than to argue that an individual working himself to death is evidence of a flawed economic system.
— Jia Tolentino in the New Yorker
TIL: The “precariat”
… automation and the gig economy are combining to create a glut of low-paid workers without bargaining power (in Britain, such workers have been dubbed the “precariat”).
Attention monopolies
The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?‘
Sean Parker, ex President at Facebook
Facebook, the almost-monopolist in the attention economy.
A statement everyone in India will agree with…
WHEN Narendra Modi became prime minister of India in 2014, opinion was divided as to whether he was a Hindu zealot disguised as an economic reformer, or the other way round. The past three years appear to have settled the matter.
India’s prime minister is not as much of a reformer as he seems, August 5, 2017 at 11:33PM
It couldn’t have been more ambiguous 🙂
Reality of the Raj, and the recovery
… in the post-colonial period is that a democratic Indian government endeavored to invest more in the health and education of more citizens, however imperfectly this was implemented. The British, in contrast, supplied fewer public goods and too often the expenditures were directed toward defending British rule, extracting revenue or ensuring India as a captive market for British goods.
Legacy of British Rule Is Still Holding India Back, April 13, 2017 at 05:10 PM
Both of these are largely forgotten, if not deliberately erased.
Many Indians tend to blame post-colonial democratic governments for bringing India down.
Most British students are barely taught the reality of British colonial rule from perspective of the colonised.
Institutions & Development
Some countries build benign, efficient institutions that foster economic growth;
others build predatory ones that retard it.
How to fix failed states, January 12, 2017 at 02:53AM
Use my marker 