Will Taylor

Faux Marx

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I just got  an email from an investment banking friend of mine with following quote attributed to Karl Marx

Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalised, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.

Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867

Apparently this has been doing the rounds on Wall St. If you are suspicious that this is actually Marx you have the right to be! The dead give away for me is the reference to buying “technology”. Not sure what technology workers were buying in 1867….

Megan McArdle has a good discussion of this quote here

Matt Nolan

A ranking of Beatles songs

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Marginal Revolution links to a ranking that someone made of Beatles songs.  Its definitely worth a read – it is amazing how diverse the Beatles music was, and how many important economic style considerations they made in their songs.

My top five Beatles songs would be:

  1. “Within You Without You” (27th on his list),

  2. “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” (56th),

  3. “Revolution” (48th),

  4. “We Can Work It Out” (12th),

  5. “Come Together” (55th).

Although I read on Wikipedia that Within you without you is about Eastern Religion (namely Hinduism).  However, it seems to be about economics to me – look at some of the lyrics:

Read more

Matt Nolan

Test post (apologises)

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Matt Nolan

If you have issues with putting up comments …

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Our spam filter is being quite over and under zealous simultaneously.  It lets a little bit of spam through – but I have heard that it has caught out a few comments.

If you write a comment and it doesn’t turn up within about five minutes, email me at nolan.matt@gmail.com and tell me and I’ll go trawling for it.  Once you have a comment approved, the spam filter should be nicer to you …

Matt Nolan

Stimulating the stimulators?

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Given the sheer number of emails I am getting about this article I thought I should post it.

Some firms in the porn industry are asking for a bailout – inline with the fact that they have suffered from a sharp fall in demand as a result of the recession.

I would say that their main mistake was saying that they wouldn’t collapse if they didn’t get the bailout – it is all about being to big too fail 🙂

Matt Nolan

Job ratings

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Via the Wall Street Journal we have discovered a list of “job rankings” (ht Marginal Revolution).

Economics manages to place itself at number 11.  Something to do with stress places Accounting above us – however, I would still suggest doing an economics degree if you have the chance 😉