Wednesday 26 June 2013

What happened to the horses?

I attended a lecture given yesterday by the the distinguished economist Professor James Galbraith entitled "Inequality, Instability and the end of Normal". Professor Galbraith is a significant figure in his own right (by coincidence he was yesterday named as a 2014 recipient of the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought), but it is obligatory at this point to mention his father, the even more distinguished economist John Kenneth Galbraith, adviser to President Kennedy amongst many other things.

James Galbraith

I won't cover the lecture in any detail; it will shortly be available here in any event. I will simply report that Galbraith was an eloquent, engaging, amusing and above all human speaker. It was extremely refreshing to find someone prepared to step back, put aside ideology and theory and ask the obvious question "How can we help those who are suffering?".

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