Tag "Francis Lee"
Reviewed by Francis Lee for the Saker Blog: Manias, Panics and Crashes: by Kindleberger and Aliber: Palgrave MacMillan – Basingstoke Hants, UK – first published in 1978 Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin – Charles P. Kindleberger This book was first published in 1978 and is now in its 6th edition. Given human nature and its corollary, economic collapse, there will doubtless be further editions. Mr Kindleberger himself
By Francis Lee for the Saker Blog According to the economics textbooks, the market mechanism is the most effective method of ensuring technical and allocative efficiencies in a capitalist economy. Technical efficiencies being the method whereby goods and services are produced at the lowest costs and allocative efficiencies being a situation where the distribution of goods is such that there will be no surpluses or shortages of commodities produced. This
Reviewed by Francis Lee for the Saker Blog Mr Mullan’s book first saw the light of day in 2017 which was a far-sighted anticipation of the path-dependency of the global economy prior to the present debacle 2020/2021. The book covered a wide range of insights in the history of capitalism, particularly contributions from Mr Joseph Alois Schumpeter, as well as the Marxist theory of the tendency of the rate of
A Case Study by Francis Lee for The Saker Blog Civil wars are by their nature rather messy and often brutal affairs involving inter alia internecine conflicts, secessions, forced reunifications, mass murder, military stand-offs and long-lasting periods of bitterness. Most states in Europe and North America have not managed to avoid this regrettable pattern of conflict, looking back, this much always seemed unavoidable. The English Civil War was no exception
by Francis Lee for The Saker Blog Nomenclature Below – Men and Ideas 1. INTERACTIONISM/PHENOMENOLOGY Wilhem Dilthey (1833-1911) Edmund Husserl (1859-1958) Max Weber (1864-1920) Alfred Schutz (1899-1959) Heinrich Rickert (1863-1936) Karl Mannheim (1893-1947) 2. EXISTENTIALISM F.Nietzsche (1844-1900) Martin Heidegger (1899-1976) Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1985) 3. HUMANISTIC MARXISM Georgy Lukacs (1885-1971) Karl Korsch (1886-1961) 4. THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL Herbert Marcuse Walter Benjamin Theodor Adorno Max Horkheimer Erich Fromm Neo-Frankfurt Jurgen Harbermas PART
By Francis Lee for the Saker Blog ‘The dependency thesis, like all good (and great) theories can be summed up in a single phrase: Modern ‘’underdevelopment’’ is not ‘’historical backwardness’’ the result of late and insufficient development; it is the product of capitalist development, which is polarizing by nature’. (Andre Gunder Frank -1996.) The leader of the UK Conservative Party, Mrs Thatcher, first came to power in the UK in
By Francis Lee for the Saker Blog “The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first principle of our philanthropy. And one should help them to do so … What is more harmful than any vice? Active sympathy for the ill-constituted and weak.’’ (1) The Beast awakens – Second Time Around Such were the sentiments – customarily referred to by Charles Darwin as the ‘’survival of the fittest’’ and of Friedrich Nietzsche’s
By Francis Lee for the Saker Blog Thomas Malthus (1766-1804) was born into the gentry, but as the youngest son he was not to inherit the family estate but instead entered the ranks of the clergy. He was to become a vicar and teacher of a ruthless, no-prisoners-taken, political economy which gave rise to his widespread fame with his Essay on the Principle of Population, the first edition being published
By Francis Lee for the Saker Blog It was the French politician Valery Giscard D’Estaing who first coined the phrase ‘Exorbitant Privilege’- a reference to the many advantages enjoyed by the US ownership and control of the world’s reserve currency. This was a situation dating back to the agreement reached in 1944 between the allied powers and established in Bretton Woods a town in New Hampshire; it was to become
By Francis Lee for the Saker Blog We’ll start with the 10 per capita poorest countries in Eastern Europe. In rank order. Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) Moldova – GDP US$7,272.00 Ukraine – GDP US$9,249.00 Kosovo –GDP US$11,348.00 Albania – GDP US$13,364.00 Bosnia and Herzegovina – GDP US$14,624.00 Republic of Macedonia – GDP US$16,349.00 Serbia – GPD US17,345.00 Montenegro – GDP US$20,690.00 Bulgaria – GDP US$21,690.00 Romania – GDP US$28,206.00 Figures
by Francis Lee for the Saker Blog ‘’The trenchant case which … socialists are able to make out against the present economic order of society, demands a full consideration of all means by which the ownership of property may be made to work in a manner beneficial to that large portion of society, which at present enjoys the least share of its direct benefits. (1) I recall this old anarchist
By Francis Lee for the Saker Blog THE NONAGE The term financialization is generally used as a reference to that part of the economy indicated by the acronym FIRE (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate) and its growing importance in the economy in both qualitative and quantitative terms. Financialization has been a developmental process whereby financial markets, financial institutions, and financial elites have gained greater influence over economic policy and economic
The tacit support given by the centre-left to the installation of the regime in Kiev should give them cause for concern By Francis Lee for the Saker Blog Politics in the Ukraine can only be understood by reference to its history and ethnic and cultural make-up – a make-up criss-crossed by lasting and entrenched ethnic, cultural and political differences. The country has long been split into the northern and western
By Francis Lee who looks at the politics of development and under-development for the Saker Blog. I think it was Sir Ian Gilmour (now deceased) who, as one time member of Mrs Thatcher’s first Cabinet in 1979, referred to her economic policy as ‘Clause 4 dogmatism in reverse.’ (1) This was an apt description from a thinking Tory. The notion that there existed a magic panacea which would banish all
Book Review by Francis Lee for the Saker Blog Beyond Confrontation Globalists, Nationalists* and their Discontents – 2020 by Phillip Mullan This is a very scholarly work by an independent minded author whose prior works have included The Imaginary Time Bomb: Why an Ageing Population is Not a Social Problem 2002, followed by Creative Destruction (an obvious Schumpeterian allusion) first published in 2017. His present offering is a wide-ranging and
By Francis Lee for the Saker Blog The boom to bust economic cycles always seem to bring out the manic behaviour of the market participants who believe that this is the chance of a lifetime to make some real cash. But it was Sir John Marks Templeton an American-born British investor, banker, fund manager, and philanthropist who was moved to comment: ‘’This time it’s different.’’ He was of course being
by Francis Lee for the Saker Blog The naval Battle of Copenhagen (1801) occurred during the War of the Second Coalition when a British naval fleet commanded by Admiral Sir Hyde Parker defeated a Danish fleet anchored just off Copenhagen. Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson led the main British attack. During the battle, he was famously reputed to have disobeyed his senior officer, Sir Hyde Parker’s, order to withdraw by holding
by Francis Lee for the Saker Blog 1. Jack London and the Iron Heel The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by the American writer Jack London, first published in 1908. It is considered to be one of the earliest examples of modern dystopian fiction. It was the fourth of London’s earlier output which included, People of the Abyss (which was in fact journalism rather than literature) and the two novels,
By Francis Lee for the Saker Blog From its inception the European Union was an ambitious strategy to build an economic bloc which would serve as a counter-weight to the US’s global economic dominance. (1) One of the primary conditions of this overall construction involved the creation of a single strong currency, the euro, that could become the rival to the US$. This was not just a political question, it
by Francis Lee for The Saker Blog The road to the future, to a new expansion as is always close to the heart of capital, led outwards, to the still pleasantly unregulated world of a borderless global economy in which markets would no longer be locked into nation-states, but nation-states locked into markets. (1) The golden age of post-war capitalism which lasted from the Bretton Woods arrangements of 1944 ended
