Monthly Archives: March 2012

The assessment of the coup at this point has to be that the soldiers have taken Mali to a very grim turn indeed. BAMAKO, 30 mars (Xinhua) — L’annonce de la prise de Kidal par les rebelles a plongé le … Continue reading →

The Prime Minister of Burkina, Luc Adolphe Tiao, just gave his “discours a la nation” where he mentioned: Les six (6) mines d’or en activité ont porté la production industrielle d’or à 32,60 tonnes en 2011, contre 23,08 tonnes en … Continue reading →

Le capitaine Sanogo s’est en revanche rendu à l’aéroport de Bamako. Pendant plusieurs heures, il s’est entretenu à huis clos avec Djibril Bassolé ou Mohamed Bazoum, chefs des diplomaties burkinabè et nigérienne, ainsi qu’avec Adama Bictogo, ministre ivoirien de l’Intégration … Continue reading →

The Mali coup is one of those opaque events that are really hard to figure out.  Observers try, and they have to produce something (for their blogs, or their employers) … but in their hearts they know they really have … Continue reading →

Over at The American Interest: They present a sharply bifurcated distinction between what they call good “inclusive” economic and political institutions, which are sometimes also labeled “pluralistic,” in contrast to what they call bad “extractive” or “absolutist” ones. Unfortunately, these … Continue reading →

Link to the interview, not sure where it broadcast.  Sanogo asserts ATT has no soldiers with him.  “No one” is protecting ATT.  No fear of counter-coup.

An excellent opinion piece by Jean-Pierre Béjot of La Dépêche Diplomatique: It’s crazy ! Totalement fou. A-t-on jamais vu un président de la République être destitué par un « coup d’Etat » à quelques semaines d’une présidentielle (à laquelle il n’était pas candidat) … Continue reading →

Seven films come immediately to mind. (With cut and paste description blurbs.) 1) A Panther in Africa – On October 30, 1969, Pete O’Neal, a young Black Panther in Kansas City, Missouri, was arrested for transporting a gun across state … Continue reading →

Apparently youth in Seno have blocked the mining trucks, demanding more local hires, more training, more transparency. Les engins de la Société minière ESSAKANE SA sont bloqués depuis le 19 mars dernier à l’entrée de la ville de Dori. Selon … Continue reading →

From lefaso.net, a UPC political rally in front of the CLAC of Boromo.  Will Diabré emerge as the serious competitor for the CDP candidate(s)?  That the rally was at the CLAC is meaningful really only to me! L’Union pour le … Continue reading →

I was at a conference today at George Washington University on liberal learning in undergraduate business education, and Bernanke kicked us out of his room so he could kill the gold standard people…. “Unfortunately, gold standards are far from perfect … Continue reading →

My daughter Sukie watched the whole video last night (she’s 9) and then she had a bad dream. But when Leslie questioned whether it was OK for her to be watching, Sukie piped up, “Gaby already watched it and she’s … Continue reading →

We had a great informal seminar by Noam Yuchtman of UC Berkeley yesterday, talking about a paper he is completing on the effects of medieval universities in acting as a “supply shock” to economic growth by providing more of the … Continue reading →

From an article Robinson and Acemoglu posted to their blog, hopefully just a typo: In this essay we provide an interpretation of why Africa is poor.  Our basic approach is, institutional. My basic reaction is, ugh.

An excellent summary by Tim Taylor…. Back in the Paleolithic era when I was learning economics, Germany’s hyperinflation of the 1920s was the classic example of hyperinflation. When I was teaching intro economics classes in the late 1980s, I would … Continue reading →

Apparently the advocacy advertising agency Invisible Children has used Facebook to go viral with a video about Joseph Kony of the Lords Resistance Army, the same week as yours truly watched the really bad TV show about “how to tell … Continue reading →

I went up to Stanford African Studies Center last Thursday for a talk by Matthew Jukes on a paper he is working on with data from The Gambia (where he taught in a school in the 1990s apparently, fun picture … Continue reading →