'Mickey au Camp de Gurs'

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Andrew Sullivan - Your Brain on Blog

The Thought Workshop - An Art Studio is Born

 

Click read more to see some funny "before" pictures.

Belfast Faces and Famous Places

See a full selection of images from the exhibition by clicking below. Alan in Belfast gave a review of the exhibition here. Culture Northern Ireland covered it  here. I also covered it on Slugger O'Toole here and on The Ideas Workshop here. I also chatted with Steve from Common Grounds in a video here. 

Dissertation on the Financial Crisis of 2008

Former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan.

‘The Fight of the Century: An Exploration of the Great Credit Crash of 2008 and of Political and Economic Ideologues.'

Introduction:

The return of John Maynard Keynes in the wake of the most damaging financial downturn since the Great Depression has sparked a debate that challenges the legacy of the Great Moderation and the 20 years of calmness that prevailed over the vast plains of global financial markets. Indeed voices have risen from the fallout of the financial crisis that continually clammer that Friedrich Hayek, neoliberalism and free markets, that which has defined the last three decades of Western economics, is not the End of History.

The debate has entered mainstream media as epitomised by the financial lyricism of ‘Fightof the Century’ as seen above, an ideological sparring match that stages a rap battle between the two political and economic ideologues of the 20^thand 21^st Century. One, Friedrich Hayek the exemplar of libertarian economics, the other, John Maynard Keynes the man of the big state, government spending and interventionary economics.

Indeed prompted by the ‘Fight of the Century’ the purpose of this monograph is to consider financial markets and the changes that are necessary in order to bring decorum to a world of finance sailing over choppy ideological waters, battered by a raging gale of populist anger.

Essay on Empirical Legal Studies

'What ELS could the 21st Century Legal Academy ask for? An exploration of law and empiricism.'

The purpose of this essay is to engage in a critical analysis of two articles that have implemented an empirical legal studies (ELS) methodology. However before the curtain rises on a detailed exploration of the two empirical analyses it is necessary to consider the rise of the modern lawyerly statistician as legal scholarship increasingly becomes “more scientific” (Ulen, 2004, pp.414).

i. Introduction to ELS.

'You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything ELS.'

Indeed in recent years we have seen the birth of a new breed of legal-empiricists who have brought about radical and exciting changes to the wider academic firmament. Empirical techniques, traditionally the tools of the social scientist have been integrated into the classical trade of legal scholarship, so long dominated by abstraction as well as theoretical and doctrinal work. The orthodox methods of the legal academic or university beard are not questioned, merely updated. Traditional doctrinal jurists are of unrivalled importance; that is not questioned.

Essay on Ordoliberalism

Hans Werner-Sinn, the voice of modern ordoliberalism.

'The Jeremiad of Ordoliberalism: DG Comp’s journey from macro to microeconomic analyses and the abandonment of Freiburg’s Sonderweg.'

The purpose of this essay is to engage in an exploration of a distinctive intellectual strand of liberal economic thinking known as ordoliberalism, a pragmatic liberal doctrine that has been instrumental in the crafting of a unique European model of Competition law. Recent years however have eroded the influence and strength of the German political economic thinking amongst European academics and policymakers who have made the ideational leap from Freiburg to Chicago. Indeed Europe has bought into the Chicagoan dogma of laissez-faire and micrcoeconometrics signalling the birth of ever closer unity between the US and Europe.

This essay is a prologue to a forthcoming paper that will analyse in great detail the ‘modernisation’ agenda of European Competition law, the shift in ideology behind the movement and the implications for the future enforcement of EU Competition law. Above all this monograph shall seek to promote the utility of ordoliberal writings and raise awareness of ordoliberalism as an endangered species amongst economic thinkers and policymakers in Europe.


This paper will be divided into three main sections.

1. Ordoliberalism: What is it and who are they?
2. Article 102: The last bastion of ordoliberal thinking?
3. Turn Europe’s eyes from Chicago to Freiburg.

1. Ordoliberalism: What is it and who are they?

Ordoliberalism developed as a result of a ‘spontaneous intellectual combustion’ (Gerber, 1994, pp.29) following the interaction of economist Walter Eucken (1891 - 1950) and two jurists, Franz Böhm (1895 - 1977) and Hans Großmann-Doerth (1894 - 1944).These scholars emanating and disseminating ideas from the University of Freiburg in southwest Germany were shaped by the 14 calamitous years of the Weimar Republic which were succeeded by the ratification of the Ermächtigungsgesetz and the emergence of a heavily concentrated and cartelised economy that facilitated the rise of National Socialism, faschism and Nazi totalitarianism. Intense distrust of private economic power and an overbearing state, the very phenomenon that facilitated the rise of Hitler, have resultantly long been the phantasms that have shaped ordoliberal writing. Indeed Lemke (undated, pp.3) has pertinently observed that the Third Reich was the result of an ‘absence of liberalism’, explaining deftly why Ordoliberals reject central planning and embrace liberal economic thinking so strongly. Moreover Nils Goldschmidt (2007) captured the enormity of these events by noting that ‘Foucault points out that… ‘Nazism was, to a certain extent, the political and epistemic road to Damascus for the Freiburg School.’ ’ It is little wonder that economic liberalism has long been the ‘guiding star’ (Ahlborn and Grave, 2006, pp.210) of ordoliberalism.

Carl J. Friedrich (1955, pp.509) is right to remark that ordoliberalism ‘is similar to traditional liberalism in a number of basic positions’. Indeed ordoliberalism like other intellectual strands of liberalism embraces private property rights, freedom of contract, stable monetary policy, fiscal conservatism and above all the market economy as the guarantor of a prosperous, free and equitable society.

However whilst ordoliberals espouse the market as the most efficient medium for the allocation of scarce resources, Freiburg scholars only exhibit broad parallels with other liberal economic thinkers such as von Mises, Hayek, Friedman, Stigler etc. Indeed the received wisdom in modern academic literature that ordoliberalism is very much a close cousin of neoliberalism is a chronic fallacy. Whilst the broad brush strokes of neoliberalism and ordoliberalism exhibit similar ardour for the market, seemingly subtle asymmetries of detail stand as incorrigible divergences in ratio. Angela Wigger (2008, pp.70) has rightly remarked that ‘Walter Eucken vehemently refused to be called a neoliberal’ and ostensibly Hayek and Eucken were ‘antagonistic colleagues’ (2008, pp.71).

In stark contrast to neoclassical liberalism, the competitive market economy for ordoliberals was not a ‘natural economic rationality’ (Lemke, undated, pp.3). On the contrary as Terry Flew (2010, pp.22) observed it was an ‘artefact of policy’. In other words it is a market dynamic that is guided by a politically independent competition authority acting as the visible hand of the market working to ensure that the economic actors abide by the spielregeln (rules of the game). This ratio of the ordoliberals is vastly at odds with Hayek’s conception of the catallaxy, the spontaneous order of competition. For Eucken, neoclassical economists had ‘lost touch’ (Gerber, 1994, pp.33) with social and political reality and had become detached from classical economists such as Adam Smith who saw the market as being constituted by norms. Nevertheless ordoliberalism, quite at odds with the Misean or Hayekian prescriptions of free unfettered markets was equally at variance with academics on the left of the ideological spectrum who advocated Keynesian prescriptions of central planning. It was the ordoliberals first hand experience of Nazi Germeny that encouraged them to sail a Sonderweg between socialism and laissez-faire, between excessive private and public power.

Victor Vanberg (1998) aptly observed that Ordoliberals do not seek to ‘intervene in market processes’ but rather they seek to ‘institutionally frame market processes’. This is the very essence of ordoliberalism as in an attempt to frame market processes ordoliberals advocate a wirtschaftverfassung (economic constitution), the keystone of ordnungstheorie, ordnungspolitik and the leitmotiv of ordoliberal writings that institutions and rules matter. Quite appropriately Carter Dougherty (2009) noted that these rules and regulations can ‘help the free market produce results close to its theoretical potential.’

Indeed Eucken et al. advocate a verkehrswirtschaft (transaction economy) that is constituted and framed by rules as opposed to a zentralverwaltungswirtschaft (centrally administered economy). The founding premise is for the state to play a strong role by setting out the spielregeln, the framework of rules by which market actors operate and the state can intervene as opposed to discretionary intervention. Ordoliberals sought both to curtail the remit of powerful private economic actors and a powerful state. It is through their first hand experience of National Socialism that ordoliberals sought to achieve a funktionsfähige und menschenwürdige Ordnung (functional and humane order) through ordnungspolitik which led Eucken to promote the policy of denken in ordnugen (thinking in orders); the political, social and economic rationality that defined Walter Eucken and which would ensure the ordnung der wirtschaft und gesellschaft (order of the economy and society).


[To read more and see the essay and references in full, click here.]

Essay on Neoliberalism

Milton Friedman, the father of neoliberalism.

'A review of the Financial Crisis and the Shadow Banks: Neoliberalism will prevail'

i. Introduction.

In this paper I will argue that the financial crisis of 2007- present and the emergence of the shadow banking system, a parallel and unregulated system of banking, are not simply the evil doings of neoliberal deregulation espoused since the 1980s. Before considering the claims that the financial crisis and the shadow banking system are the products of a prevailing neoliberal orthodoxy and that financial crash has been to “Friedmanism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for authoritarian communism” (Klein 2008), it is necessary to clarify a few keys issues. Firstly, this paper will consider the historical and theoretical underpinnings of neoliberalism as a modern philosophical theory of economics and the market. The paper will then attempt to paint a picture that illustrates how the financial crisis unfolded as well as shedding some light on the nature of shadow banks and the role they played in the crisis of 2007- present. It will then be appropriate to consider the claims that the crisis has sounded the death knell for neoliberalism. Finally we will consider life for neoliberalism post-crisis.

Essay on Legal Universalism

The Hoffmann Chronicles: The Quest to Full Universalism

If Guan Siew (p.784) suggested in 2008 that the recent landmark cases of Cambridge Gas v Navigator Holdings [2007] and re HIH Casualty and General Insurance Ltd [2008] were “significant moves towards the goal of universalism,” then ostensibly the question begs, what impact has the July 2010 Court of Appeal case of Rubin & Lan v Eurofinance [2010] had on the increasingly borderless and neighbourly international insolvency landscape? More compelling, following the principle judgement from Ward LJ in the Court of Appeal, leave to appeal has been approved. Thus insolvency judges, practitioners, academics and regulators across the globe can eagerly await the ultimate judgement on the matter from the Supreme Court at some stage between late 2011 and early 2012. It remains to be seen whether we can expect the prevailing ethos of transnational judicial cooperation to continue and whether we can expect the Supreme Court judgement of 2011/2012 to build upon the ‘Hoffmann Chronicles’ (Cambridge Gas, HIH and Rubin) and to further the judicial and legislative quest towards full unmodified universalism?