Blogotariat

Vanavil is a school for the poorest of the poor in the middle of Tamil Nadu, India. It started in 2005 as an orphanage/school for the children of two historically nomadic communities left stranded by the devastating tsunami of 2004. Many of the children of these two communities (the Narikuravar and Boom Boom Mattukarar) who were taken in had lost their parents and were destined for a life of begging or worse. Their luck was that a few well-to-do committed people decided to look after them.

David Epstein worked for Keating when I worked for Beazley and was for a while Kim’s chief-of-staff and highly regarded, and fondly called by Paul ‘Young Einstein’. He was, however, like most of Kim’s people — and all of Keating’s — a privatising free marketeer. He was later a spin-doctor for Qantas, and a friend of Joyce.

My 30 minute interview with Sharon Firebrace on Razor Sharp Tuesday 4 March : global super powers jockey for political and economic power and control

http://sharonfirebrace.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/4-3-14-john-passant-aust-national-woollongong-university-global-super-powers-jockey-for-political-economic-power-control2.mp3

The days of idling wishing for a wearable robot are gone. Researchers at the Perceptual Robotics Laboratory in San Giuliano Terme, Italy, have created a "robo-suit" that is capable of lifting 50 kilograms with each of its arms.

Well…I am sorry to be the bearer of bad new on Ukraine but it appears, well and truly, that markets have cast it aside like chaff blown across the steppe. In the world of money all that matters is real politik and Vladimir Putin has it in spades (with the usual caveat that the human being [...]

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Given that no action we can take will change things, and given that most Crimeans have Russian passports, and given that economic advantage will come to the peninsula, and given (and this is the big one) that the rest of Ukraine will stay intact, we should probably, I think, cease huffing and puffing, ask that it be ratified by referendum, and give over.

With all the recent discussion of how hard it is for journalists to read academic articles, I thought I’d provide a little service here and ‘translate’ the recent NBER working paper by Daron Acemoglu, David Laibson and John List, “Equalizing Superstars” for a general

It appears MB has finally beaten some sense into Ross Gittins: When people hear news reports about redundancies at this factory and that, many conclude we must be heading for recession. This time it ain’t that simple. After a record 21 years since the severe recession of the early 1990s, we’re overdue for another one [...]

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By Leith van Onselen Roy Morgan Research (RMR) last night released its unemployment estimate for the month of February, which registered a large jump in the unemployment rate to 12.3% from 11.3% in January (see next chart). It was the highest unemployment rate recorded by RMR since February 1994. According to Gary Morgan: “Australian unemployment [...]

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By Catherine Cashmore, a market analyst and journalist with extensive experience in all aspects relating to property acquisition. Follow Catherine on Twitter or via here Blog. By any comparative measure, the Australian economy has performed remarkably well over the last two decades. Strong gains in the labor force throughout the 1990’s, rapid population growth and [...]

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Exclusively from Michael Pettis’ newsletter: First, and most obviously, the RMB is not overvalued. Looking at just the change in the value of the currency over some period is meaningless because China’s export competitiveness is based as much on low wages and cheap financing as it is on an undervalued currency, but in any “normal” [...]

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Find below the iron ore charts for March 4, 2013:     Rebar futures are still trading at their lows. It’s a better mix of weakness today with some steel price support as muted demand returns following winter and outright iron ore price falls indicate active destocking at mills which will ultimately cease and reverse. [...]

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