Brief post - also out of the Cable talk - on efficacy of QE

Vince Cable explains that the City is a bit like the oil company compounds in Gabon - surrounded by barbed wire, paying a levy to government, but otherwise distant from the host country

The UK government's decision to re-base pensions won't work, and even if it does, will be counter-productive. It's evidence of the inability of governments to think beyond the corporate view of economics and consider the economy as a whole.

The co-option of “fairness” by the UK's new government has unnerved many on the left. Yet in reality, all sides have always drawn on the language of fairness. What is at stake is really the interpretation of the causes of inequality; a matter of economics. This article suggests how we should interpret the inequalities of modern society from a post-Keynesian perspective

Historical and cultural detail provides a rich understanding of India's powerful new business houses

Yes, great, independent content costs and if the readers don't pay for it who will? Why you should want openDemocracy to be supported by voluntary reader donations and give if you can

The guardians of learning can no longer allow the Library to be surrounded with barbed-wire fences. It is time for the academe to liberate scholarship

After a brief resurgence of Keynesian economics in response to the crash, neoliberalism is back in the ascendant. For the Liberal Democrat party in the UK this signals the abandonment of a proud liberal tradition.

Technology should have improved access to knowledge much further than it has, and nowhere more so than in the academe. Here is a simple and low-cost proposal to democratise learning in the UK

In a review essay of Matt Ridley's "The rational optimist" and Mark Boyle's "The moneyless man", scavenger and squatter Katharine Hibbert sympathises with alternative living but also wants clear thinking

The UK's Coalition has delivered its first and potentially defining budget under the banner of fairness. How do its figures stack up? An insider from Brown's policy team responds.

What is the balance of the ideological, tactical and necessary in the axe-wielding plans for the UK public sector announced today?

The EU is more divided, diverse and polarised than the USA. But in the EU, the lines of tension are forming worryingly close to the political centre

We hear that our national accounts should follow the rules of double-entry bookkeeping. But we can't manage the economy as if it were just a very large company

Why can't the BBC talk about football like the French? oD's Editor-in-Chief asks why the Corporation's flagship morning news programme Today makes a fascinating question so dull.

Collecting some thoughts on the public service new media

Playing with Google's "motion" widget for data visualisation

Fairness is all the rage, it was Gordon Brown's mantra, is claimed by the Lib Dems and advocated by the UK's new one-nation Tory premier David Cameron. What chance does the concept have with friends like these? As Labour prepares for opposition it might be advised to try and different approach.

Has the battle to reform finance in the UK already turned into a victory lap for the City? The indications from Liberal Democrat Secretary of State Vince Cable are ominous