Daily Archives: June 26, 2015

MINDS Conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil

Rio de Janeiro- RJ. On July 24, the Multidisciplinary Institute for Development and Strategies (MINDS) will gather top policymakers, economists, and analysts at the FORD-MINDS Conference on Banking, Financial Instability, and Financial Governance in Brazil to discuss the structure of Brazil’s financial system to ensure stability for a growing and equitable economy. The conference, is being organized by MINDS with support from the Ford Foundation, and will take place on Friday, July 24, at the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV/EESP), Rua Itapeva 474, in São Paulo. Conference details are below.

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The BBC’s Inept but Revealing Attempt at a Game Theoretic View of Greek Crisis

By William K. Black
Quito: June 25, 2015

The BBC came up with a good “hook” for a story on the troika’s assault on the Greek economy and people. “Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister, spent his academic career … studying game theory.” Professor Marcus Miller, a UK economist (U. Warwick) wrote an article for the BBC premised on how Varoufakis would apply game theory to Greece’s negotiations with the troika (the IMF, ECB, and the European Commission). Miller is a colleague of the great Robert Skidelsky and has co-authored with him an article explaining the economic illiteracy and self-destructive nature of the troika’s (and UK’s) infliction of austerity in response to the Great Recession.

The BBC, however, is such a great fan of austerity that one rarely reads why the vast majority of economists think that using austerity to respond to a Great Recession is akin to the quackery of bleeding a patient to make him healthier. Miller’s article in the BBC about game theory has the wrong title (recall that the author often does not get to choose the title), the wrong game, the wrong concept, and the wrong payoffs. The title of the article is: “Can game theory explain the Greek debt crisis?” The article does address that issue. It is limited to the issue of the new Greek government’s negotiations with the troika concerning a crisis that they inherited.

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