For reasons that I find somewhat hard to explain, but which can only imply that I am ready to return to work, yesterday afternoon's inclement weather persuaded me to write some new glossary entries. I have done far too few of late, and this project is by no means complete, as yet.
Thos written yesterday were on:
The Bank of International Settlements
Are they perfect? I very much doubt it. But I hope they help.
I might try to knock out some more this week. I rather enjoy doing them.
As with all glossary items, their presence is identified by a duller than normal hyperlink.
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Only one suggestion…. although it is fairly unimportant.
Amortisation is also a term used for loans.
An amortising loan/bond is one where principal is paid down periodically throughout the life of the loan. (In contrast to a “bullet” loan/bond where principal is paid in one shot at the end).
Otherwise, good see the glossary expanding.
Agreed
I decided that would complicate issues though….
Sorry
Fair enough
Thanks. One term mentioned (under depreciation) is ‘accruals basis’ – as something I only half understand, it, and its alternatives, could usefully be added to the blog, methinks.
I will do it…
If you’re in the mood for further glossary definitions how about “borrowing”? It’s one of the most misused and misunderstood terms which appears daily all across the media and leaves the reader to wonder: does this make any sense? (cf tabloids, politicians), does the perpetrator actually understand what he/she has written/stated? (cf the entire media, politicians, especially Chancellors of the Exchequer, BoE and Treasury officials), is the perpetrator deliberately seeking to spread fake information? (cf certainly politicians and possibly elements of the media, although with the latter I suspect basic ignorance is to blame).
Understood and on my list
The second sentence in your neoliberal entry might need a bit of work:
“The described by others as neoliberals by others rarely describe themselves as neoliberal”
I like how the word neoliberal in the neoliberal glossary entry links back to the neoliberal glossary entry in a kind of infinite loop.
You did a good job fitting the key ideas into such a short entry – I know you could write a lot more on this but want to keep it short. I understand why you haven’t included this as you want to keep it short, but for me I feel what is missing from your entry is an emphasis on how neoliberalism is not so much an evidence-based theory but more of a kind of dogma based on belief rather than reason and evidence – government bad, markets good – and no amount of evidence showing its failure will dissuade followers. You included this in your good longer explanation of right-wing economics (which describes neoliberalism even if you don’t call it that), where you talk about how every market failure is always seen not as a result of flaws in the market but because there was too much government, and so the solution is always less government, whatever the evidence.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2021/09/27/the-differences-between-right-wing-centre-ground-and-non-market-believing-economists/
We saw this mindset in action earlier today with David Cameron’s appearance at the Covid enquiry, insisting that we were better placed to deal with the pandemic because of austerity. According to Cameron, he got the public finances in good order and if he had not we would have been much worse off in the pandemic because we wouldn’t have been able to protect the NHS. If debt had been £1trn higher then we would have had a financial crisis at the same time as the pandemic.
It wasn’t just cuts to the NHS, but all the other effects of austerity that weakened other support systems in society that left us much more vulnerable to the pandemic, but for Cameron “healthy public finances” were more important than any of these for protecting the health of the nation. It’s part of the neoliberal mindset – the belief that the everything, including health, is built on the market and the economy, when it’s actually the other way around: you can only build a resilient economy on good health, as we will see in the coming years with increasing rates of long Covid weakening the resilience of our society due to the government (and opposition) deciding there’s nothing wrong with allowing Covid to continue ripping through our country.
If you said would massively cutting real-terms money and resources going into the NHS leave us in a better position if we then add in a sudden massive amount of patients from a deadly disease in the form of the pandemic then even a five year old could see how obviously we would be in a much worse position and how absurd it would be to suggest otherwise, but in the upside-down world of Cameron the opposite is true, because his brain cannot go against his dogmatic belief system – it does not compute.
He doesn’t realise that this approach is exactly the same attitude that Johnson had at the start of the pandemic, where when other countries were starting to take action Johnson insisted that the government was ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and be the champion of the market and the economy without any restrictions for health for an overblown threat – this attitude to putting the market above controlling the pandemic cost tens of thousands of lives, and yet despite that Cameron is still insisting it’s the correct course of action.
Thanks
I will take another look