<< February 27, 2008 >>
in theory it shouldn't even exist. ...
... but it does, and nobody knows how to combat it without intensifying unemployment on the one hand, or inflation on the other. The puzzle of stagflation has done more than destroy expectations of smoothly running, manageable economic life in already well developed economics. It has destroyed the very intellectual foundations upon which all schools of macro-economic theory rest. The reality of stagflation has done nothing less than make nonsense of some two centuries and more of elaborate theoretical thought.
for those of you interested in reading more about stagflation than wikipedia will tell you, i greatly enjoyed reading the above book. i must confess, however, that this may have been only the second economics book i have ever read. the first, read the previous weekend, being her earlier work, the economy of cities. catwof continues where this book leaves off.
i have not yet looked for the latest and greatest on stagflation theory, but as a casual observer it seems like people still don't know what's going on? any appropriate recommendations on the subject would be greatly appreciated. it's an open call for indoctrination.
anyway, part of her theme is that economies are real things, not some abstract machines, and are shaped by real events. the economic decline of the london docklands and manhattan docks had nothing to do with interest rates, foreclosures, or any other theoretical calculation: it had to do with the very real fact that containerization came along, making the labor of many people basically worthless. in the name of "protecting" their jobs, london and new york missed out, and the ports of felixstowe and elizabeth grew savagely. if you'd like to read more about containerization, the box was a fascinating read.
unrelatedly, upon joe's recommendation last week that the latest minefield nightlies were superfast, i gave it another try. while the continued lack of keychain support is less and less annoying with each password i manually import into firefox, there were a couple of things that bugged me that seemed a little more within reach. so, hmm, my first firefox patch first firefox patch, almost ten years late.
god those toolbar bookmarks are embarrassing. but at least i could keep tabs on my interrupts, unlike on a modern machine.
it's too bad i didn't act on an earlier desire - the now-obvious tabbed browser - but i guess i should feel a little ok in that it probably would have been a little much. i did, however, manage to hack in my own throbber. it happened to be a W that morphed into an N. wonder why i picked those letters...
