Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

A few thoughts about Turkey. The readers of this blog are a well-informed bunch, and I'm sure they know the basics. To wit: on May 31,  protests were underway (peacefully) in Istanbul, where the catalyzing issue was the government's plan to replace a historical park with a shopping mall. Police responded that day in a heavy-handed way, tear gas, water cannon, 63 arrests. This has led to a spreading of the protests and a wider range of grievances, while Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan has asserted that he has the high ground, and called the protestors "hoodlums." This is clearly about a good deal more than a single land-use dispute. It reminds me of something I wrote in my book, Gambling with Borrowed Chips . I sought to explain an upswing in crude oil prices that began in April 2007 and that continued until the summer of 2008. The world price of crude is of course very sensitive to news about the politics of the middle east. In April 2007, when the upward mo...

Two stories in the Wall Street Journal on December 27, 2012 reminded me of an issue I had avoided in the course of my last book, an issue I mean to address in my next one. Near the end of GAMBLING WITH BORROWED CHIPS I wrote, "There are many fascinating and important matters that I have not even had the opportunity to mention....There is, for example, the question of bank financing versus exchange-based financing." I then mentioned the theory of Joseph Studwell, expressed in his book ASIAN GODFATHERS, that the economies of southeast Asia suffer from an exclusive reliance on bank financing. Corporations report consistently disappointing earnings, due to the "perverse curse of high savings rates and bloated banks." But then I moved on, to a final "confession of inconclusiveness" and a technical appendix. In a future book, I will have to address Studwell's point. Two stories in today's WSJ will help.I'll just give the bibliographic dat...