Protected: Meme of the decade 2: 2003 – 2005

December 14th, 2009 § Enter your password to view comments. § permalink

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Protected: Meme of the decade, part one

December 12th, 2009 § Enter your password to view comments. § permalink

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Size limits on banks

December 10th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink

Cutting the “too big to fail” knot: order that “no high-rolling investment bank can exceed 2% of GDP; no boring commercial bank can be bigger than 4% of GDP”

University protests

December 10th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink

Student protests: have there been an unusual number of them going on this year? I’ve seen next to nothing about them in the media, although from word-of-mouth they seem pretty damn huge:
In France, strikes effectively shut down the entire university system from February to May. That’s the longest student strike ever in France — longer than ’68, for instance.

And now, Austria and Germany are on the go. It started with with the occupation of the University of Vienna in late October. That sparked a large movement across Austria and Germany, which is claiming occupations of 80-odd univeristies. Today they’ve also been protesting at a meeting of state education ministers in Bonn — apparently with some success.

Obviously there’s always a low-level simmering of student protest, and it tends to be a dog-bites-man story that doesn’t much inconvenience anybody. The protesters are also monumentally incompetent at simplifying their message (which, very roughly, is about education becoming more driven by exams and money, to the detriment of actually learning anything). And I’m not convinced by attempts (common around here) to connect it to the protests in Greece and Iran; those aren’t really ‘student’ protests, no matter how prominent students are in them.

[this was going to be a post about going to the occupied Freie Universität yesterday, but I got sidetracked. Briefly, there was excellent music, and I got to re-meet my ex-housemate Lara — who, apart from being generally fantastic, has drawn the most wonderful picture of me. I will post photos, just as soon as I find somebody to take them for me :)]

Urban regeneration after a recession

December 8th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink

Le Monde points out that periods of recovery from recession are crucial in the growth, or decline, of inequality between districts. It is now that new businesses are created, or not, in depressed areas, and when they can most easily be nudged by state intervention.

C’est dans ces périodes, paradoxalement, que les écarts entre les territoires risquent de se creuser, entre ceux qui végètent et ceux qui rebondissent vite. Dans ces périodes, aussi, que le gouvernement, rassuré quant aux risques d’explosion sociale, peut être tenté de réduire les moyens, déjà limités, consacrés à la politique de la ville pour les redéployer sur d’autres priorités.

Urban recovery after a recession

December 8th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink

Le Monde points out that periods of recovery from recession are crucial in the growth, or decline, of inequality between districts. It is now that new businesses are created, or not, in depressed areas, and when they can most easily be nudged by state intervention.

C’est dans ces périodes, paradoxalement, que les écarts entre les territoires risquent de se creuser, entre ceux qui végètent et ceux qui rebondissent vite. Dans ces périodes, aussi, que le gouvernement, rassuré quant aux risques d’explosion sociale, peut être tenté de réduire les moyens, déjà limités, consacrés à la politique de la ville pour les redéployer sur d’autres priorités.

Protected: Colin and Cristina

December 7th, 2009 § Enter your password to view comments. § permalink

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Protected: Big Pink

December 4th, 2009 § Enter your password to view comments. § permalink

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Where am I?

You are currently viewing the archives for December, 2009 at Dan O'Huiginn.