The sinister conspiracy behind the finance crisis January 28, 2009
Posted by Sverre in : Malaysia, Political economy, World politics , comments closedThe conspiracy has been found. As always we can rely on Malaysia’s perceptive grand old man, Mahathir Mohamad to see through the smoke screen of western economics and discover the hidden threads that are being pulled. And this time he has returned to a good old classic:
The jews did it
8. The current financial crisis which is destroying the economies of the U.S. Britain and in fact all the countries of the world is due to manipulations of banks, financial institutions and the monetary system by Jewish supporters of Israel. (chedet.co.cc)
And why is this interesting? Because this isn’t just some random crackpot blogger. This is the man who led Malaysia for just about three decades and has been seen as one of the more prominent moderate voices of the Muslim world. This is the man who crossed the IMF and handled the previous finance crisis in ’98 in his own way. This is a man many still listen to.
How the financial crisis helps Israel is still somewhat unclear to me.
No change for Malaysia? January 27, 2009
Posted by Sverre in : Malaysia, World politics , comments closed
There is a mood of anticipation over the world as Barack H. Obama (as I now understand we should call him) has taken his seat in the Oval Office. This mood of anticipation and great expectation of change is not unlike what had the opposition movement in Malaysia whipped up last year when Anwar Ibrahim made his comeback into Malaysian politics. But did change never come?
September 16 2008, the opposition movement’s new national day, was announced to be the day the roots of the Malaysian establishment would shake and mass defections from the government coalition would be announced. The blogging community and opposition coalition leaks had the tally at more than 30 MPs ready to jump sides, and the Pakatan Rakyat opposition coalition ready to sweep in and take power. But the day came and went with out much of the announced ruckus. Certainly no mass defections. (more…)
Norway goes Keynesian January 26, 2009
Posted by Sverre in : Norwegian politics, Political economy , comments closed
The ongoing finance crisis has certainly given classic Keynesianism a new boost. And few countries have embraced this as clearly as Norway did today. The center-left government under Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg from Labour (Arbeiderpartiet) and Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen from the Socialist Left Party (Sosialistisk Venstreparti) introduced a massive expansion package aimed at combating unemployment.
The package expands the national budget directly with about 2o billion NOK (roughly 2.2 billion € or 2.86 b$), with nearly 17 billions increased expenditure and over 3 billion worth of tax cuts. With secondary effects, the government estimates a total expansive effect of 27 billion NOK, reducing the substantial oil-boosted government surplus. When correcting for petroleum-based offshore income, the government now estimates a government deficit of 119 billion NOK for 2009. This sums up to an expansion of the oil-corrected government budget of 2.3%, substantially higher than the 1.5% goal set by the EU. (more…)
Loosening up a bit January 26, 2009
Posted by Sverre in : meta , comments closed
Anyone checking up on this blog regularly would have noticed that it’s been a month since any posts now. That month has been spent celebrating Christmas as well as being sick with a really bad flu. But it’s also been spent thinking about what I’m gonna do with this blog. And the result is that there’s going to be a little change in style.
This is my first serious attempt at blogging, and I’ve been going now for a few months. It has been both fun and educational even if I don’t think I’ve revolutionized the way the world thinks just yet. I’m working on it, though.
Looking back on the blog so far, both in terms of content and stats, I think I’ve been to concerned about being scientific. I’ve been too concerned with not posting something until I’ve thought about it long enough to say something meaningful about it from a social science perspective. That was also my main motivation for starting blogging – to make my small, obscure scientific contributions accessible. I won’t stop doing that, but I do think I’ll be a bit more relaxed when it comes to also posting just simple thoughts and observations on things related to political science. That’s what I’ve noticed that I like to read on other blogs, and that’s some of the posts that have got the most hits on my blog as well.
So, to conclude: From now on there will not be less scientific stuff, but I will be more relaxed in slipping less scientific stuff in between. Stay tuned!