Category Archives: Social values

Cathy O’Neil: Women in Math

By Cathy O’Neil, a data scientist who lives in New York City and writes at mathbabe.org

A study recently came out which was entitled “Can stereotype threat explain the gender gap in mathematics performance and achievement?”. One of the authors created and posted a video describing the paper, which you can view here.

As a preview, there seem to be four main points of the paper and the video:

1. The papers on stereotype threat normalize with respect to SAT scores which is bad.
2. Evidence for stereotype threat is therefore weak.
3. We should therefore stop putting all of our resources into combating stereotype threat.
4. We should instead do something easy like combating stereotypes themselves.

I will first address a meta -issue and a blog discussion related to this paper, and then will argue directly against the paper and its conclusions.

Read more...

Mainstream Economics as Ideology: An Interview with Rod Hill and Tony Myatt — Part II

Rod Hill and Tony Myatt are Professors of Economics at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John and Fredericton (respectively). Their new book, The Economics Anti-Textbook is available from Amazon. They also run a blog at www.economics-antitextbook.com.

Interview conducted by Philip Pilkington

Philip Pilkington: I think it was Joan Robinson who said something along the lines of “while we may have to teach a limited amount of material, we could at least teach that which is useful”. I’ve often encountered economics students who, frankly, seem to me to have a very tenuous grasp of the important aspects of economics. I recall one in particular who graduated from a very prestigious university not understanding what I meant when I said that I thought the chronic unemployment in Ireland was due to a lack of effective demand triggered by the bursting of the housing bubble.

In your experience do you find that students leave mainstream economics courses equipped to deal with real world issues?

Read more...

Mainstream Economics as Ideology: An Interview with Rod Hill and Tony Myatt — Part I

Rod Hill and Tony Myatt are Professors of Economics at the Department of Social Science at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John. Their new book, The Economics Anti-Textbook is available from Amazon. They also run a blog at www.economics-antitextbook.com.

Interview conducted by Philip Pilkington.

Philip Pilkington: Your book seems to me a much needed antidote to the mainstream economics textbooks and can either be read alone or together with them. I think that’s a great approach because it allows students to become familiar with what is being taught in the classroom but also allows them to take a critical perspective on this material. So, let’s start with the format of these textbooks.

Read more...

Marshall Auerback: Anschluss Economics – The Germans Launch a Blitzkrieg on the Greek Debt Negotiations

By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist and hedge fund manager

News stories continue to suggest that Greece once again appears on the verge of reaching a deal with its private sector creditors on how much of a loss they would be willing to accept on their bond holdings.

Read more...

Doug Smith: Useful Idiot Watch – Matt Yglesias

By Douglas K. Smith, author of On Value and Values: Thinking Differently About We In An Age Of Me

Earlier this month, Matthew Yglesias of Slate tweeted “EXCLUSIVE: The activities of individual business executives have no relationship to the level of economy-wide employment.”

It’s hard to choose what is most ridiculous here…

Read more...

Michael Hudson: Banks Weren’t Meant to Be Like This

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College

A shorter version of this article in German will run in the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung on January 28. 2012

The inherently symbiotic relationship between banks and governments recently has been reversed. In medieval times, wealthy bankers lent to kings and princes as their major customers. But now it is the banks that are needy, relying on governments for funding – capped by the post-2008 bailouts to save them from going bankrupt from their bad private-sector loans and gambles.

Yet the banks now browbeat governments – not by having ready cash but by threatening to go bust and drag the economy down with them if they are not given control of public tax policy, spending and planning. The process has gone furthest in the United States.

Read more...

Philip Pilkington: ‘Does Capitalism Have a Future?’ – Why the Financial Times Asks All the Wrong Questions to Avoid the Real Issues

By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin, Ireland

The Financial Times recently ran a series on the future of capitalism. The FT is usually an excellent publication – but the series came up seriously lacking.

The lack arises because of the question posed.

Read more...

Advisors Feast on the Lehman Carcass: Bankruptcy on its Way to $2 Billion in Fees

One of my buddies who must go unnamed because he is involved in the Lehman bankruptcy told me many months ago that the unwinding was going to cost over $2 billion. A new story at Bloomberg suggests that his prediction is on track. The costs of various advisors to the Lehman estate in now in excess of $1.6 billion, and it ain’t over.

But perhaps more important, my mole, who has oodles of experience on big messy international bankruptcies, was incensed at the way various advisors, in particularly Alvarez & Marsal, which is running what is left of Lehman and is the major domo, and the lead law firm, Weil Gotschal, were feeding at the trough.

Read more...

Spain’s “Indignados” and the Globalization of Dissent

Real News Network highlighted a foreign broadcast on Spain’s “indignados,” and the way they have been providing advice to other anti-neoliberal movements around the world. I’m not sure it has gotten the attention it warrants, but the people that were involved in Occupy Wall Street early on conferred a good deal with seasoned protestors in Spain and Egypt.

Read more...

Bloomberg News Joins the “Inside Job” Team, Objects to Economics’ Inadequate Conflict of Interest Standards

It’s surprising and refreshing to see Bloomberg News, via an editorial, take on the way the economics profession has failed to clean up its act not simply in the wake of a massive intellectual failure but after the movie Inside Job highlighted some examples of corruption in the ranks of Famous Economists.

Read more...

Ron Paul Debate Flushes Out Gender-Baiting Right Wing Opportunists Masquerading as Progressives


The intense debate precipitated by a post on this site, “How Ron Paul Challenges Liberals,” and follow up posts by Glenn Greenwald and here serve to prove their simple yet frequently misrepresented thesis: that Ron Paul’s anti-war, anti-Fed positions expose fault lines among those traveling under the “liberal” banner.

Anyone who read comments on NC prior to this debate would have noticed some sympathy for Paul, ranging from the more common “he’s batshit and I’d never vote for him, but his opposition to our Middle East adventurism and the lack of accountability at the Fed is refreshing” to some making a stronger case for him. That shouldn’t be surprising given the point often made here and in the few lonely “progressive” outposts on the blogosphere (“progressive” is in the process of being co-opted in the same way “liberal” has been): that the Democratic party has been so deeply penetrated by the neoliberal/Robert Rubin/Hamilton Project types that it isn’t that different from the right on economic issues.

It should not be controversial to point out that the Democratic party uses identity politics as a cover for its policy of selling out the middle class to banks and big corporate interests, just on a slower and stealthier basis than the right. And we’ve seen the identity card used in a remarkably dishonest manner in this Ron Paul contretemps.

Read more...

Naked Capitalism, “A Home for All Sorts of Bircher Nonsense”

By Matt Stoller, the former Senior Policy Advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can reach him at stoller (at) gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @matthewstoller.

A post I wrote two weeks ago, How Ron Paul Challenges Liberals, created something of a stir.  It was the most commented article on Naked Capitalism, ever.  And it kicked up a series of arguments among Democrats and civil libertarians.  Glenn Greenwald, who has been talking about these problems in prominent forums, followed up with this remarkable post (and then this one), and has taken many insults as a result.  This in and of itself is worth noting – the slurring of those who critique the structure of modern liberalism is an essential tool in the preservation of the status quo.  I’m going to highlight a few of the reactions here without much of a rebuttal, because I think the reactions themselves illustrate the struggle that boxes in traditional partisan Democrats.

Read more...

Ian Fraser: The Economist Loses the Plot With This Shallow, Pro-City Propaganda

By Ian Fraser, a financial journalist who blogs at his web site and at qfinance. His Twitter is @ian_fraser.


I was surprised and disappointed when I opened my copy of The Economist on Friday morning.

The magazine is running a feebly-argued propaganda piece headlined “Save the City” as its cover story. The piece vaunts the “skills” that are to be found in the City of London and seeks to persuade us that having a powerful financial sector is critical to the future health of the UK economy and that the “Square Mile” must therefore be cherished and preserved at all costs. The cover image harps back to the Blitz, as if Hitler’s Lufwaffe is once again poised to carpet bomb a key part of our heritage.

Outside PR puff sheets like HBOS’s absurd “Deal Leaders” of 2005-08 and the Pravda-style advertorials inserted into newspapers and magazines to launder the images of evil dictatorships, I’ve rarely read such a farcical or misleading article.

Read more...