The Last Tour Guide to Leave Cuba

Mike in hand, our tour guide stands at the front of the bus. “This will be my last tour,” she announces. “I am not the same person I was six years ago. Then I was hopeful. There was so much work I didn’t have time for a break. Now it’s different. My generation, we feel betrayed. Ten years ago they promised reforms. But nothing changes.” . . . → Read More: The Last Tour Guide to Leave Cuba

How the U.S. Military Protects and Enriches Multinational Speculators

At a 1972 economics conference, at the height of the Vietnam war, Mason Gaffney presented an invited paper blandly entitled “The Benefits of Military Spending.” The paper so shocked the conference organizer that he refused to include it in the conference volume. Gaffney couldn’t find another publisher willing to touch it. Now, only 46 years later, here’s that paper (draft version), updated by Cliff Cobb, and published in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology (March 2018). What so offended the economics establishment? . . . → Read More: How the U.S. Military Protects and Enriches Multinational Speculators

The White Man’s Burden, by William Easterly

“Who got the most standby [credit]s from the IMF over the last half century? The answer is Haiti, with twenty-two. And not just Haiti, but the Duvalier family (Papa Doc and Baby Doc), under whom Haiti got twenty of the twenty-two standbys from 1957 to 1986.”

“The politics were bad, but the Duvaliers made up . . . → Read More: The White Man’s Burden, by William Easterly

Wealth of Nations, Wolf on Jacobs, Krugman on Warsh

Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, calls Jane Jacobs, who died last week, “a self-educated intellectual of astonishing originality.” He devotes most of his article, “National wealth on city life’s coat tails” (5/2/06) to a review of one of his and my favorite books, Jacob’s 1984 Cities and the Wealth of Nations — which he . . . → Read More: Wealth of Nations, Wolf on Jacobs, Krugman on Warsh

Helping People Help Themselves, by David Ellerman

David Ellerman’s new book, Helping People Help Themselves: From the World Bank to an Alternative Philosophy of Development Assistance, (forward by Albert O. Hirschman) is finally out in affordable paperback. Yay!

“The best kind of help to others, whenever possible, is indirect, and consists in such modifications of the conditions of life, of the general . . . → Read More: Helping People Help Themselves, by David Ellerman

Gangsta-nomics at Harvard

“Just as opening the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes produced both great economic benefits (the North American Midwest could export grains, iron ore, machinery to the world on ocean-going ships) and some undesirable side effects as well (the introduction into the lake system of lamprey eels and zebra mussels), so sending a . . . → Read More: Gangsta-nomics at Harvard