Stock market corrections are by definition deflationary events. The financial press seem to understand this. They’ve even started referring to “bubbles” once again with regard to recent shocks in US and Chinese stock markets. But they never explain what caused the rapid inflationary rise in equity prices to begin with. Somehow this is a mystery, since many economists insist that QE doesn't cause inflation.
China has recently devalued its currency. Like many governments, the Chinese government thinks this will help the economy by increasing exports. But it will really just destroy real wealth in the process.
A selection from Chapter 42 of Economic Controversies.
An interesting theme in a 2014 documentary on electronic music (recently added to Netflix instant place), I Dream of Wires, is the tension between two different philosophies of developing electronic music technology. At the one end of the spectrum were the purist avant-garde musicians who worked primarily with very expensive and hard-to-use equipment that was a large departure from already established types of music-making. At the other end of the spectrum were the "commercial musicians" who wanted to make electronic music, but also wanted an interface that was easy to use.
Many governments — including the US — have often inhumanely forbidden families from supplying ransoms to kidnappers to save loved ones. The Obama administration recently, and correctly, suspended the practice of prosecuting families in these cases.
The crash of 1929 came after a decade of interventionist politics following world War I. "Free markets" were blamed anyway. Decades later, we pursue even more interventionism, and when it fails, we blame "free markets" all over again.
There's no Platonic laboratory where "pure" science happens independent of human ideas, motivations, and institutions.
Damian McBride is the former head of communications at the British treasury and former special adviser to Gordon Brown, erstwhile Prime Minister of
