Daniel Hannan European Parliament speech of 26/03/09

Daniel Hannan, a conservative British member of the European Parliament, became a YouTube hit, excoriating the policies and performance of the British Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Macroeconomists need to apply some new lessons and relearn some old ones

NO TWO economic crises are identical. But the same questions recur. How did we get into this mess? How can we get out of it? How do we avoid another?

Some answers repeat themselves too. You can be pretty sure that sooner or later someone, quite possibly an anguished economist, will declare that economics itself has gone astray. The wisdom of some past master, whether celebrated (John Maynard Keynes, for example) or neglected (Hyman Minsky, perhaps), has been forgotten, and the economy is paying the price.

Go now to: Human psychology and the economy | An economic bestiary | The Economist

Australia’s unemployment rate hits 5.2%

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)  Labour Force figures released today show that the global recession is bearing down on the Australian jobs market.

Unemployment rate increased from 4.8 per cent to 5.2 per cent in the month of February.

Australia is battling a global recession that is resulting in falling growth and rising unemployment right around the world. The US economy has shed an unprecedented half a million jobs a month in the past four months. Read the rest »