Painting Fakes

Recently Kate Raworth posted a triptych on twitter of herself, Stephanie Kelton and Mariana Mazzucato holding up each others' most recent books, with the comment: 'Doughnut  + Mission + MMT = Let's transform economics. Here's to the synergy of ideas.'  This trio form a neat little group of subversive women economists who challenge mainstream thinking - and don't we need that challenge right now! I've yet to read Mazzucato's latest book (coming up soon) but from what I've read so far, all three women push the envelope of economic thinking in an attempt to move it towards a more just and sustainable discipline.  Of the three, Raworth's Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist is the most comprehensive, and the most radical. Raworth is an English economist who has worked for much of her life in the development field.  Her gigs include doing fieldwork in Zanzibar, working on the UN Human Development Program, and worki...

So, Donald Trump is gone.  At least, he's not President any more.  True to form, he didn't go quietly, and he keeps hinting he'll be back in 2024.  He could be in jail by then, or at least convicted of one of the many crimes for which he is currently being investigated.  But since he's so far been a Teflon man, I wouldn't like to count on it. Trump has raised untruthfulness to a pitch you would only ever expect to see in a totalitarian regime with a State-controlled media.  His daily storm of tweets, not to mention his speeches and press conferences, involved a steady stream of lies.  These are not a secret because the US has a free press which employs fact checkers.  The Washington Post has been keeping a tally and in October 2020 it passed 30,000 untrue statements for the four years of his presidency, an average of over 50 per day.  In one single day, on 11 August 2020, he made 189 untrue statements.   Some of these are trivial and si...