the limping messenger

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe
catch a bankster* by his toe
if  he hollers make him pay
a million dollars every day.

Screenshot from a work in progress on the actual 'financial crisis' and the 'housing bubble' in America: a visual and statistics scroll linking to some serious socio-economic sources with background information sifted from a myriad of internet comments.

One of the inspiration sources for this work is the “post-autistic economics network” and its excellent e-journal “Real World Economics”. The March 2008 issue had a indepth article on the ‘housing bubble’ by Dean Baker (issue 46).

One of these ideas that just resides on my hard disk half way made, waiting for an opportunity to be published; alas the Dutch daily De Volkskrant OOG digital gallery – I just heard – will be closed down so no more platform for my artistic comments on the news with a small but dedicated audience and some small fees for all the efforst to make such a documented visualization.

Let me put two snapshots of this study on line to have something of this effort public (yet without the documented links) Click the small size scrolls for a sneek preview full size: once the image opens in a new web page click it again for a full view and use the scroll bar below to navigate; I will soon make a proper interface for this scroll in development.

Just checked if some new issues of the alternative economics journal have come out since, and yes, in March this year a full 94 pages of serious well documented economic analysis came out: issue 49 (for some odd reason a link to this issue did not come up at the base web site of the journal peacon.net. But I did find a working link: so there are several articles to call my attention especially in this week of ‘post-housing-bubble-crisis’ bonus payments in the US and Europe as if nothing has changed, nothing has been learned. The belated discovered March 2009 issue carries in depth articles that do not feature in regular news media and are worthwhile reading for quiet some time to come. Clive Dilnot writes another chapter in the series “The triump and costs of greed” and the son of the famed Canadian/American economist John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006; remembered by me generation for his “The Affluent Society” and the later “The new industrial state” published in 1967), James K. Galbraith (1952-) publishes his statement to the US House of Representatives on the “Conduct of Monotary Policy”. Instead of  “washing away the sins of the banks” by making new public-debts, Galbraith urges Congress to brake up the very large banks in smaller ones and to establish public-banks – like during the financial crisis of the thirties – to asure that small and medium businesses will get the loans they need. I am getting interested to check whether someone has made a comparison of  American progressive liberalist economics as expressed by the Galbraith family during what mounts up to almost eighty years.

* lawlessness of gangsters combined with the power and priviliges of bankers