Tag Archives: Politics

Keeping at It, by Paul A. Volcker

Paul Volcker, who died this last December at the age of 92, is some sort of almost demi-god among people interested in central banking, monetary policy, and banking regulation; in other words, people like me. I was hence extremely interested … Continue reading

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The Fifth Risk, by Michael Lewis

When I was at the Bank of England, I remember discussing with someone over a coffee about the need to screen new candidates for a willingness to work as public servants. The idea—as argued by my counterpart—was that people who … Continue reading

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National Populism, by Eatwell and Goodwin

National populists prioritize the culture and interests of the nation, and promise to give voice to a people who feel that they have been neglected, even held in contempt, by distant and often corrupt elites. The result of the Brexit … Continue reading

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Post-Truth, by Lee McIntyre

The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history. —George Orwell The book Post-Truth, by Lee McIntyre, opens with the above quote by George Orwell. Orwell, in fact, opens almost every chapter … Continue reading

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Leaving the LibDems

After the Brexit referendum, back in June 2016–I remember the moment when I realised that Leave was going to win: I was in a restaurant in Lima, Peru, with my wife’s family, following the news thanks to their Wi-Fi–I felt … Continue reading

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Abortion

Abortion is a great example of a topic where the two sides argue from completely different perspectives. One side—pro-choice—argues that abortion is a private matter, and hence it is up to the woman to decide. The other—pro-file—claims that a fetus … Continue reading

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Glenn Loury

Glenn C. Loury is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of Social Sciences at Brown University. He got his PhD in Economics from MIT in 1976. By 1983, he had two QJEs, one REStud, one AER, and one Econometrica. Yep. These … Continue reading

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On Tyranny, by Timothy Snyder

Post-truth is pre-fascism (Timothy Snyder) Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty (Wendell Phillips) Timothy Snyder is a Professor of History at Yale and, in 2017, he published On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. The timing of the … Continue reading

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Universal Basic Income

Andrew Yang is a Democratic presidential candidate for the 2020 election that has a key policy proposal: a universal basic income (UBI) of $1,000 a month for every American. I have not precisely been a supporter of this kind of … Continue reading

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Why Orwel Matters, by Christopher Hitchens

Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind (George Orwell in Politics and the English Language). And the more one is conscious of one’s political bias … Continue reading

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