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Category: Politics

  • yet the market approved

    There’s a lot to be said for relying on the FT as your dominant source of world-scale news, but that it will make you a happier person is not among them, unless perhaps you are already a member of its target demographic (which I am decidedly not). Here’s a bit from a medium-long read about…

  • Nostalgia for politics: The Hours Have Lost Their Clock by Grafton Tanner

    Subtitled “The Politics of Nostalgia”, Tanner’s book is divided into three sections, of which I found the first to be the most interesting: this is where Tanner unearths the history of nostalgia as a diagnosis (broadly medical before becoming more specifically psychological) which was literally lethal in its earliest manifestations among soldiers of the Napoleonic…

  • not merely window-dressing

    Adam Tooze, an aside in an account of the unfolding Ghanian debt crisis: Narratives are not merely window-dressing. They matter, because they fuel optimism and sustain belief, which infuses the assessment of analysts and credit rating agencies. Narratives are amongst the tools with which capital allocators manage the uncertainty inherent in any investment, but which…

  • the theology of capital

    The primary product sold by all management consultants – both software developers and strategic organisers – is the theology of capital. This holds that workers are expendable. They can be replaced by machines, or by harder-working employees grateful they weren’t let go in the last round of redundancies. Managers are necessary to the functioning of…

  • primarily to encourage us […] to make the decision to care less

    Adam Kotsko: One is forced to conclude that political coverage is not meant to inform us about how to vote. What, then, is it for? I have said that the business press is meant for people who are making daily ongoing decisions in pursuit of a clear goal, so what is the equivalent for the…