Economists: brand new stars.

Economists were and still are, to a certain extent, a mysterious breed. Their studies and position in the real economy’s world have often been questioned on their usefulness. Jokes about economists flourish, indeed. Here are some examples:

“An economist is a trained professional paid to guess wrong about the economy.” 

or

“Economics is the only field in which two people can share a Nobel Prize for saying opposing things.”

 

Accused of being far from reality, unuseful for what matters real industrial economy, economists were not among the scientists and brilliant engineers who were the protagonists of the last 24 years. Technological innovation took the stage, and let the poor and boring subject of economics among the sciences with no focus on real life and application. Now things seem to have changed. The actual slump brought new attention to the figure of the economics’ expert and researcher. We could call this “Sudden popularity”. They are interviewed, consulted, their advises constitute the “juicy piece” of several shows and newscasts. Suddenly everyone sees in economics the only key capable of solving, or at least softening a crises which was not caused by economics in its purest definition. Wild finance is the first responsible. So Kondratiev’s cycles’ definitions and monetary policy mechanisms’ aren’t foggy topics anymore. This situation though, isn’t going to last that long. Once the crisis will be overcome (as it will surely be) economists will return to their lives, once again ignored and once again ready to give wise advises to those unknowing, when the times will require it.

Money, money, money, must be funny …

“In the rich man’s world…”

So Abba were singing and so I was singing in my mind when this morning I read an article on the newspaper. Here in Italy there is a famous financial and political newspaper called “Il Sole 24 Ore”, and for those of you who don’t know it, it is comparable with the Financial Times,… actually many times it is said to be even better than FT, but its strongest limit is the language in which is written: italian.

Well, this morning I had to leave for Rome and I decided to buy a newspaper to read on the train. Among the news reported on the first page there was a small article dedicated to Hillary’s victory in Pensylvania. I went right to this page and read the article. There I found out that Hillary’s campaign is facing difficulties for what concerns financings; her tv spots are far less than her opponent: Obama. The newspaper was quite accurate in reporting how much money is left for both of them, and where Hillary seems to have left only something like $ 8 million, Obama has almost $ 42 millions.

WOW

That was my exclamation, and even though the nun sitted at my rightside didn’t seem to like this article as much as the others she had peeked in before, I continued to stare at the article and read it more carefully. The thing that surprised me doesn’t lie on the tremoendous amount of money that it is spent for these campaigns, but on the fact that Obamas’ position is in conflict with this matter of fact. He has always been saying he has no lobbies’ interests to carry on in his programs, in opposition to Hillary, but I would like to ask him:

and why you have more money than her?

Actually you find yourself with 5 times her money, but it doesn’t seem you have 5 times her supporters…

So, people who sustain Obama, seems to be quite more rich than Hillary’s supporters,… when it is put in this way he doesn’t seem such a popular representative…

Spain…the country of the future

It may seem strange I write about Spain when, after Italian election there would be plenty of discussions to be done for what concerns the new government. Maybe I am writing about Spain, also for this reason. I do really prefer to write about countries I admire…, Italian elections’ results definitely aren’t what I was hoping to be…

Why Spain the country of the future?

- Growing economy,

- Social welfare,

- Latin spirit (which is always a good thing )

Event if gay weddings were allowed some year ago, the sky didn’t fall on Spain. Spain, the same country where the new Defense Minister, pregnant at the moment, goes visiting soldiers in Herat.

by Reuters

What a wonderful Europe, what a wonderful Spain!