In a comment to his earlier assessment of the OECD’s new economic outlook, Jasper is raising an interesting, almost philosophical question that I think is worth a discussion in its own right. He claims that -
Economists should study the economy so they can finetune it to suit the needs of the people living inside this [...]

…below the fold.
But first an introduction. I’m guestblogging from Amsterdam and my site can be found here. Very much honored to post at the Fistful (I would be, they’ve got visitors), although in all honesty they might be better served by a Francophone blogger.
As it is, they are grossly misunderestimated by the French part [...]

Did prices really go up when the Euro arrived? The public mind, or at least the dominant media discourse, says they did. The inflation indices say they didn’t, or at least the prices that did go up were outweighed by the ones that went down. This paradox may have been solved. Erich Kirchler, of Vienna [...]

It never stops when your blog has to cover an entire continent. Hardly had the Italian left taken AFOE’s advice to get Giorgio Napolitano elected as president than the Clearstream scandal in France was getting out of hand, and nothing at all on the blog! Fortunately, at the moment the news from that quarter is [...]

Well, this is a little late, but we ought to put on record that the fun-lovin’ minicaudillo’s fingers were eventually pried from the Italian prime ministership. As predicted, he went out with a considerable degree of low comedy, as the Italian senate struggled to elect a speaker largely because the Berlusconi side insisted [...]

This just about sums it up:
French shoppers, scarcely distracted by riots in March, increased spending significantly in the first quarter of this year, with purchases of household durable goods soaring, official data showed on Friday. The robust spending growth is almost certain to have helped eurozone economic growth rebound in the first quarter of 2006.
Meanwhile:
the [...]

The Moldovan population has fallen from more than 4.3 million people in 1989, to just 3.4 million in 2004 excluding the separatist Transnistria area in the east, rising to a bit under 3.8 million if one includes Transnistria’s resident population. Randy McDonald asks:
Moldova’s example demonstrates that, when economic conditions become sufficiently bad and/or when the [...]

Well if you’re over 35 you may be. That’s the implication of today’s decision to offer redundancy to workers in the 35 - 50 age group:
Ericsson, the telecoms equipment maker, on Monday offered a voluntary redundancy package to up to 1,000 of its Sweden-based employees between the ages of 35 and 50. The unprecedented move [...]

Well just in case the Iranian situation wasn’t difficult enough in and of itself (or here), there are always some around who will seek to take short-term benefit from the temporary embarassment of others. So this week, as June delivery oil prices spiked up around the 74 dollar a barrel mark, it became just [...]

Overheard in the bar, Paris-Toulouse TGV near Bordeaux…
A French saloon bar bore, who has apparently just returned from a spell abroad, is in the process of berating “national decline” to the barman. Apparently these students are deluded, irresponsible fools, France is in the Middle Ages, and two of the escalators weren’t working at Montparnasse [...]