August 2011
11 posts
4 tags
Why politicians don't get the riots
By David Boyle, nef fellow
I have had a fascinating response to the blog http://davidboyle.blogspot.com/2011/08/let-them-yearn-for-tat.html
I wrote earlier this week about the riots, blaming vacuous materialism and urging a new kind of political language. Most of it was even positive.
But the politicians have returned to Westminster today, and the new political language which does not have...
James Meadway on GDP fixation and lessons from... →
3 tags
Economics needs history
By David Boyle, nef fellow
In the week that the banks failed – that strange week in October 2008, where everything seemed to be unravelling – I ventured into the City Business Library, in its familiar, slightly unkempt building off London Wall.
I used to spend quite some time there, when I was writing about the history of money. I remembered it – perhaps wrongly – as a font of hidden...
3 tags
We must rein in our feral financial system
By Andrew Simms, nef fellow, and Tony Greenham, head of Finance and Business
Yesterday marked unprecedented consecutive daily falls in the history of modern markets.
It’s clear that our Ponzi economy, built on debt has reached its limits. Many of the debts have become unpayable. They can only be dealt with through default, rescheduling or being ‘inflated away.’
The financial elite resist this...
2 tags
nef's Lydia Prieg on the eurozone crisis at... →
3 tags
London can't afford to ignore inequality any...
By Stephen Whitehead, Researcher, Valuing What Matters
Image by George Rex via Flickr
As Londoners set to with brooms and binbags, trying to clear away the signs of last night’s violence, there’s a strange sense of unreality over the capital. Despite the sirens blaring through the night, despite the wreckage on the streets, despite the smoke on the skyline, it seems hard to believe that this...
3 tags
It's the 1780s all over again
Image by J@ck! via Flickr
By David Boyle, nef fellow
I live in a relatively peaceful suburb of south London, in the heart of a huge allotment, secure in the knowledge that – if there is rioting – it will not come near here.
So it was a genuine shock, as I walked through the park to the station this morning, to find clothes hangers and plastic bags and the other detritus of looting, and then an...
3 tags
Bravo to Fish Fight, but we still need to eat less...
By Aniol Esteban, Head of Environmental Economics
Getting people excited about fish has never been easy, but since its launch last January, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s FishFight campaign has raised public attention to the fish and the madness of discards like no one had done before.
Yesterday’s episode of Hugh’s FishFight on Channel 4 certainly showed just how successful...
2 tags
It's 1931 all over again
By David Boyle, nef fellow
“Future students of history will be shocked and angered by the fact that in 1945 the same monetary system that had driven the world to despair and disaster [in the Great Depression], and had almost destroyed the civilisation it was supposed to stand for, was revived on a much wider scope.”
So wrote the Conservative French economist Jacques Rueff in 1964. The...
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Until then, we’ll be blogging here.
London’s feral youth?
By Jennifer Leadley, Researcher, Valuing What Matters
Image by Nicobobinus via Flickr
After the riots that swept across London last night, the next few days will undoubtedly see a host of theories put forward about why and how a local Tottenham protest escalated into two nights of widespread violence and looting.
It’s not difficult to understand why emotions are running high in Mark Duggan’s...
