Issue 25 – March 2023

First Word

Small print writ large

Welcome to our 25th issue which is quite a milestone for us.  Given that our mission is to open up thinking on economics it’s probably no surprise that our theme

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Columns

Pecked to death

Frances Coppola on the power of salacious rumour. On Friday 10th March, a bank died. Silicon Valley Bank’s sudden failure sent shockwaves across the world. How could an apparently sound

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Banging the Qigong

Holistic philosophy of self-care, community and sustainability with razor wire is, it seems, the way forward. Thomas, my beloved husband, is giving me no peace with his chatter about the

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Interviews

Fools and their money

Rosie Collington, with Mariana Mazzucato, are authors of a new book laying bare the world of consultancies and their clients. They argue that the consulting industry weakens our businesses, infantilises

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On the road to reality

Professor Alan Kirman became a complexity economist before the term was invented.  Having trained in equilibrium economics, his intellectual curiosity led him to do something few economists actually do: study

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Reclaim the right

At a time of fake news, fraud and big lies, Alice Sherwood has come to the rescue with a book on authenticity. In it, she argues that although our counterfeit

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Articles

Murderous mimicry

This extract from Authenticity: Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfeit Culture by Alice Sherwood explores a tragic effect of information asymmetry. Malaria. Its epithet: the “unsurpassed scourge of humankind” is well

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All or nothing

Environmental, Social and Governance thinks it’s an adjective but tries to be a noun. Jason Miklian and John E. Katsos explain why it means so much more. Or less. Joe

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Money talks

Willy Diddens on why philanthropists think they have to evade tax. Call it branding, public perception, corporate image or optics, ultimately the great majority of people, businesses, governments spend a

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The Beijing sting

John Perkins recounts times spent hoodwinking developing economies out of their resources for the US and warns how his Chinese counterparts are raising the bar. I was an economic hit

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Another small step

Bronwyn Howell explains why humans might remain at the top of the chain of command. Crypto-currencies, and the blockchain technology that underpins them, are widely-cited as game-changers in technology, fiercely

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Gas guzzlers swerve the issue

Noel Cass asks: how do the rich justify their high-carbon lifestyles? Every month, another headline points out that the rich are responsible for the majority of climate-damaging carbon emissions. In

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Time to spend

Jason van Tol tells a story of the true price of policy. Tragedy struck recently in my friend’s kindergarten class. Savanah, the single, working grandmother of Davey, one of the

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The debt ceiling melodrama

US federal debt has its limits. Richard Vague tells the tale. One of the great melodramas of American politics erupts in Washington when the federal debt approaches its statutory limit and

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Dividends in the Co-op

Margaret Lund tells how cooperation works in practice. In theory, there should be no such thing as a multi-stakeholder cooperative (MSC); in practice, it is a popular model of cooperative

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Nobbled in a noble cause

How we became prize fighters. Henry Leveson-Gower recounts. I was going through my mail (the paper stuff) some months ago when I was a little shocked to open a letter

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Deception and perception

When money is the messenger, why do the poor believe it? Paul Frijters questions the truth. According to Max Lawson of Oxfam, who recently gave a fascinating interview in The

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