Rubrics » Bridging News
Romania, Above Eight EU Member States in Terms of Actual Individual Consumption
In international comparisons of national accounts data, such as GDP per capita, it is desirable not only to express the figures in a common currency, but also to adjust for differences in price levels. Failing to do so would result in an overestimation of GDP levels for countries with high price levels, relative to countries with low price levels. More
Fight (Book) Club
The war in Ukraine is the starting point for the creation of a new global structure. The process might last several decades. For the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the West is truly faced with a united and purposeful adversary whose endgame is yet to be determined.In order to know how the future world will look, it is helpful to have some ideological fountainhead in order to be able to understand the ideological structures of the current major players. The existing philosophical backbones will be used to define new relationships on the global stage. More
Time – Resource and Currency
Although it is a work that appears – at first glance – to be very analytical, the essence of this book is a relatively simple one – a practical vision for a better world.Continuing the ideas expressed in another book by the same author (For a Golden Romania [Pentru o Românie de Aur – in Romanian] in which the vision of the Romanian economist Anghel Rugină was brought back to light, especially regarding the issue of money – that should be completely backed in precious metals – and monetary systems – either in place, historically, or theoretically imaginable), in Time – Resource and Currency [Timpul – Resursă și monedă – in Romanian], Octavian Bădescu delves into a deep inquiry on the nature of money and its logical and practical essence, while exhorting readers to return with him to the “fundamentals” of economic reasoning. More
How Time Flies in Cambridge and Why It Matters
I spent the 2022 winter holidays in Cambridge, UK. When we say Cambridge, we Romanians think primarily of the university, the University of Cambridge, although our Romanian mental image of a university is very different from theirs. And the fact that when we hear Cambridge we think most often of Cambridge, the English city on the River Cam, is yet another proof of our Eurocentrism. Why? Because Cambridge, UK [1], is different from Cambridge, MA [2], which is the seat of another great university, that of Harvard University, or Cambridge, Ontario, Canada [3]. For fun or information, there seem to be about fifteen places named Cambridge around the world [4]. More
The American Elections Confirm Maintaining the Course in Foreign Policy
During the recent midterm congressional elections, I had the opportunity to observe a polarized nation at the ground level while in Washington, DC. This was a competition in which political affiliation has become an element of identity as strong as, if not stronger than, race or religion. The Republicans talked about inflation and mismanagement of the economy, while the Democrats marched on the emotional message of the democracy under attack. In such a polarized society, there are no strong victories – the party in the White House has a habit of losing in the first midterm elections after the presidential campaign promises of rivers milk and honey fail to materialize; the Republican tsunami did not materialize, either, bypassing the Democrat majority in the Senate and winning a very small majority in the House of Representatives. In practice, the Republicans can only frustrate the Democrats. Any achievement in the next two years will have to come through bipartisan means, at a time of peak political and societal tension. Like the presidential elections, the congressional elections ended up being decided by the skin of one’s teeth, generating precarious and contrary majorities, deepening the political decay of the American state. More
The Illegitimate Public Debt – A Short Conceptual Discussion
The public debt formation is the direct effect of a causal mix containing at least the following factors: a) the weak capacity of the private sector to push the economy towards its potential, that requires state intervention by increasing the public expenditures beyond the internal possibility to cover such an increase (in a keynesian or post-keynesian pattern); b) the weak capacity of the public sector (state/government) to collect the taxes and other revenues in society (no matter that this incapacity is due to incompetence or a competent corruption), that requires an alternative source of public revenue, public debt (either internal or external); c) the illegitimate exuberance of the politicians (either Parliament or, especially, the Government) with regards to indebting the nation within a populist (that is, in an unjustified way, without mentioning its unsustainable character) framework of politics (no matter the reasons for such a populism). More
Romania’s GDP, 1.6% of EU Total in 2020
Romania’s gross domestic product in 2020 was 218.2 billion euros, which puts us at 13th place among the economies of the EU, according to data published by Eurostat. In the previous year, we were just under Czechia (223,2 billion euros vs. 225,6 billion euros), which had a stronger decline and went down to 215,3 billion euros . More
Poetic Inquiry into Human Thought Foundations (III)
Shortcuts to riches possibly include unlawful activity, damaging to uninvolved parties. Understandable motivation can degenerate into overreaction or well-thought countercurrents directed against structural power centres. Spite and scorn mix with a feeling of furious helplessness and the ethical helm of conduct is abandoned. If beautiful summits are unreachable, then the very base is shaken by all possible means. The final outcome depends on the collective power of these abhorring such “unthankfulness” and refusal to make the best of their own abilities or continue their development. Raging overthinking can easily be confounded with inaction, and more often than not a dangerous spillage of negative emotions floods a society. More
Memories from the Future of the European Union
The “science of future” (future studies, futurology) represents, at least, a paradoxical expression. Before anything else, the future’s flaw is not the fact that it is a too complex web of events, but that it… has yet to happen; we can see it/dream about it, but we cannot “know it” because it neither disseminates “news”, nor emanates “science”. Afterwards, the future is (will be) just one, although there are a lot of probable and plausible futures in the minds of the professional visionaries; and, ironically, absolutely all of them are cursed to never match the real future. More
Reflections 30 Years after the Dissolution of the USSR
This article evaluates the impact of political changes in the Soviet Union in the second half of the 1980s on the external and internal situation of the communist regime in the Socialist Republic of Romania. We contend that the outward opening policy launched by Mikhail Gorbachev cancelled the usefulness of the Ceausescu regime to the West after 1985. In this context, the cooling of relations with the West, added to the frosty pre-existing relationship with Moscow, led to the external isolation of the communist regime in Bucharest and to a worsening domestic economic situation. Thus, the loss of both support blocs (Western and Eastern) coupled with the poor domestic situation precipitated the collapse of the indigenous national-communist regime. More
Economic Fireside Stories Revisited
The winter holidays is the time for gifts, carols, for meeting with loved ones, for stories near the fireplace and for memories, for mulled wine with cinnamon and warm cake. I propose to you that you read three stories, woven around the teachings of some famous economists from the past centuries. Although they are a product of imagination, the stories describe phenomena that had and continue to have an overwhelming influence on people’s lives. I hope that what you will read further will remind you of the stories you read in childhood, beside the Christmas tree, beyond the economic lessons. More
The Specter that Haunts Economists – Social Justice
I occasionally read, not in a systematic or deliberate fashion, articles or larger studies on economic inequality, poverty, the free-market (or, by way of opposition, less free), democracy, freedom, and the like. It is obvious that a reflection, especially at this high level of generality and abstraction is conducted quite metaphysically, that is, based on pre-reflective assumptions going to beliefs, on the one hand, and theory-laden, on the other hand. I am aware of these two unavoidable conditionalities and I am trying, as much as possible, to compensate for them in the analyses and the conclusions I draw, so establishing a degree of honesty for the authors in case. But the problem is of another kind, namely that the pretentious concepts mentioned above are, at most times, discussed in a common (“civilian”) framework, with a thin background of political theory, or social philosophy, or ethics or, above all, social justice theory. This means either the authors deliberately use a pop style (although, in my opinion, popularization is a more difficult labor than the original one, because it must make compatible both the correctness of concepts/issues discussed and the accessibility of ideas for non-experts) or simply those authors do not hold the minimum necessary background in the matter at hand. It is known that the imprecision (and, sometimes, even the misunderstanding) has the potential to illuminate ideas or directions not intended by the original work, and is just as true that, often, ones who know little in a field can enact revolutionary ideas, exactly because they did not (yet) “gain” the prejudices of that field. But such eventualities are extremely rare and I cannot (no matter how much goodwill I would have) give credit to writings that lead so very important subject into an unintentional (I hope) desultoriness. More
