Entrevista com Kevin Murphy

John Cassidy publicou, recentemente, na New Yorker um ótimo artigo, "After the blowup", sobre a reação da Escola de Chicago à crise econômica. A entrevista abaixo é parte de uma serie de entrevistas que ele fez com vários economistas de Chicago.


Kevin Murphy is one of the best-known Chicago economists from the post-Lucas, post-Fama generation. In 1997, he was the recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, which is presented to the best American economist under forty. Although he is primarily a microeconomist, Murphy has published articles on a wide range of subjects, including income inequality, the value of medical research, economic growth, and unemployment. He wasn’t available to see me when I was in Chicago, but I subsequently talked to him on the telephone, and these are the notes of our conversation.


To what extent has the financial crisis and subsequent recession damaged the prestige of Chicago economics?

The Chicago straw man has taken a beating. The Chicago economist who says that markets always get things right and financial markets always work efficiently, he has taken a beating—no doubt. But the Chicago economist who I think about when I hear that phrase, he’s in the same place that he was in a year ago.

So what is Chicago economics, if it isn’t its media image?

I’ve always thought of Chicago economics as an approach to the subject—a way of doing economics. It’s based on the belief that the tools of economic analysis are really useful for explaining things in the real world. When you approach problems in the real world, you use the same tools you use in doing economic theory. That has always been the test—a guy would give the same answer in a seminar to a question about the economy that he would give if somebody stopped him in the street. He wouldn’t say, the theory is this but the actual answer is something else.

Is that attitude reflected in your own research and teaching? [Murphy teaches graduate courses on economic theory, with Gary Becker, and on the economic analysis of policy issues.]

Yes. [Murphy explained that he sometimes teaches summer camps in price theory for Ph.D. students from other universities.] Many of them say they have never been taught in that way, or done a course like ours. In tying theory to data when studying a range of phenomena in the real world, you are always trying to give an example. If you can’t give one it is a problem.

It is also true in seminars. If you present a paper in Chicago, you don’t get much of a chance to present. You have to defend. The type of paper where the presenter says, “Well, this assumption clearly isn’t realistic, but I’m just going to ignore that for now and derive some results”—there isn’t a whole lot of sympathy for that approach here in Chicago. You’ve got to be telling us something that is valuable and applicable to the real world. People like Friedman and Stigler really instilled that tradition in this place.

What about skepticism toward the government: Isn’t that also a key part of the Chicago tradition?

Sure. You have to ask why would the government get it right. You can’t just say, here’s a market failure and the government needs to step in and address it. You have to look in detail at what the government might do, and compare the relative effectiveness of the two.

What about the efficient-markets hypothesis and the idea that speculative bubbles are very rare, or might not even exist? Is that the Chicago view?

I teach economics a lot. I teach in the economics department; I teach in the business school. I talk about house prices, and I think I’ve always raised the possibility that prices might get too high.

[Murphy cited the example of the Japanese real estate bubble in the late nineteen-eighties and early nineteen-nineties.]

I was looking at that, and I was thinking, “Geez, these prices are assuming that the returns from housing—the rental cost of housing capital—is going to be really high in the future. How realistic is that? Boy, it’s really hard to justify these prices.” During the Internet stock bubble, same thing. I looked at those prices and said, “Geez, can I rule out the possibility that investors are being irrational?” I think we believe that prices can depart from economic reality. The problem is that you can’t see it in advance.

So is the efficient-markets hypothesis consistent with that idea—that prices sometimes depart from fundamentals?

It could be.

[Echoing what John Cochrane had told me, Murphy explained that there were two rival explanations for big movements in asset prices: attitudes to risk that vary over time, which are consistent with an efficient-market equilibrium, or irrational exuberance and bubbles, which aren’t.]

Empirically, I don’t see how you can distinguish between the two. It’s become almost a matter of semantics. Do you call it time varying risk premiums or irrational exuberance?

But the fact is that much of the variation in the market is unpredictable. In finance research, it’s a major victory if you can explain half of one per cent of the price variation with your model. The idea that you can’t beat the market, or predict it—that part of the efficient-markets hypothesis is very much alive and well.

What about the rational-expectations hypothesis and the work of Robert Lucas? How does that fit in with your idea of Chicago economics, and the idea of tying theory to data? Surely the data rejected much of that work early on.

Well, I think that work does have empirical implications, but it is certainly a larger distance back from the theory to the data.

[At this point, Murphy defended Lucas’s work, saying that it helped fill in an important gap in Keynesian economics, which couldn’t explain the inflation of the nineteen-seventies. Going back to the nineteen-sixties, Milton Friedman and Columbia’s Edmund Phelps had put forward the idea that, contrary to Keynesian ideas of the time, there was no long-run trade-off between inflation and unemployment—in the jargon of economics, the “Phillips Curve” was vertical. Lucas added a lot of rigor to that idea, Murphy said. He also brought up Lucas’s work on the causes of economic growth, which date back to the nineteen-eighties.]

That side of his contribution is probably even more important, because it says that the questions of what we can do to keep creating growth is really critical. That gets us back to physical capital, human capital, and technical progress—and those are the things that really matter in the end. How do we do a better job of promoting physical investment, human capital investment, and technological progress? When you think that way, you have to always consider the long-run implications of short-term actions.

That takes us neatly back to the current situation. You have written skeptically about the Obama administration’s stimulus package. Why are you so critical?

[Murphy referred me to a January 2009 presentation of his (pdf). The presentation analyzes the likely impact of the stimulus and concludes that it wouldn’t do much good. The key to his negative result, Murphy explained, was two assertions: 1) that the taxes necessary to pay for the stimulus would act as a significant disincentive for people to work and for businesses to invest, and 2) that the government wouldn’t spend the stimulus money wisely, and that much of it would be wasted.]

The reason I think it’s neat is that it makes clear what really matters. You can say it’s Keynes versus Friedman, but it’s really a debate about bigger government versus smaller government. The whole question of what size the [fiscal] multipliers are—that’s just part of the question.

Fonte: The New Yorker

Mad Men in the He-Cession

Ótimo artigo sobre sobre crises financeiras no Imperio e seu impacto sobre o comportamento da população masculina.


Market analysts have discovered that there are a few growth industries during depressions: Macaroni and cheese is flying off the shelves, along with cheap gin, video games, running shoes, and handguns. It is a disturbing image—one imagines unemployed men with time on their hands playing Fallout 3 (shoot mutants in a postapocalyptic Washington) and Overlord II (control evil minions who burn houses and beat up peace-loving, dope-smoking elves) while eating mac and cheese. Are those same men lacing up their running shoes in preparation for Armageddon?

Pundits have come to label the current economic downturn a "he-cession." In the summer issue of Foreign Policy, Reihan Salam, a fellow at the New America Foundation, suggested that because men's traditional jobs (particularly in finance and construction) have declined faster than women's (particularly in health care and the service sector), we might see a rise in angry, unemployed men—a source of social instability in 1990s Russia and today's Middle East.

There have been a lot of economic downturns in American history. While economists in the Reagan years tended to highlight the slow, gentle increase in American GDP that seemed to feed economic growth from the American Revolution forward, heterodox economists have argued that the American economy has been riven with crises, shocks, and other bear-market calamities. Where orthodox economists have read back into history the "Great Moderation," heterodox economists have seen hysteria, chaos, and violence. Cultural historians, meanwhile, have noticed a lot of hysterical talk about manhood, violence, and chaos during the panics of 1785, 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873—the list goes on. So what do scholars have to tell us about the tribulations of previous American panics? Was manhood in peril then? Were unemployed men really dangerous?

The United States has been thick with bad debts since the beginning of the Republic. As Woody Holton showed in Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (Hill and Wang, 2007), revolutionary states often financed and fed their armies with IOU's that they did not or could not pay. The value of the IOU's and state currencies fell with Schwarzeneggerian speed as banks and other creditors refused to accept them. The states promised to pay eventually (this may be sounding familiar), but those who needed cash—soldiers and widows—could not wait. Speculators bought up their IOU's at pennies on the dollar. (Speculation could be equal opportunity, as far as gender was concerned; Abigail Adams proved a fairly adroit speculator in New England paper.) Though some people fared well in the postrevolutionary crisis, tempers flared. Responding to public pressure, states passed "stay laws" to prevent creditors from seizing land. Other states guaranteed that valueless state money would be payable for all debts. That angered a young Thomas Jefferson, who sold his father-in-law's land on the installment plan. Virginia law forced him to take useless state currency for it.

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When I was small, a Woman died , Emily Dickinson

When I was small, a Woman died --
Today -- her Only Boy
Went up from the Potomac --
His face all Victory

To look at her -- How slowly
The Seasons must have turned
Till Bullets clipt an Angle
And He passed quickly round --

If pride shall be in Paradise --
Ourself cannot decide --
Of their imperial Conduct --
No person testified --

But, proud in Apparition --
That Woman and her Boy
Pass back and forth, before my Brain
As even in the sky --

I'm confident that Bravoes --
Perpetual break abroad
For Braveries, remote as this
In Scarlet Maryland --

How to keep a new year's resolution

Dicas do filosofo Peter Singer sobre como manter as promessas para o ano novo.


Did you make any New Year's resolutions? Perhaps you resolved to get fit, to lose weight, to save more money, or to drink less alcohol. Or your resolution may have been more altruistic: to help those in need, or to reduce your carbon footprint. But are you keeping your resolution?

We are not yet far into 2010, but studies show that fewer than half of those who make New Year's resolutions manage to keep them for as long as one month. What does this tell us about human nature, and our ability to live either prudently or ethically?

Part of the problem, of course, is that we make resolutions to do only things that we are not otherwise likely to do. Only an anorexic would resolve to eat ice cream at least once a week, and only a workaholic would resolve to spend more time in front of the television. So we use the occasion of the New Year to try to change behavior that may be the most difficult to change. That makes failure a distinct possibility.

Nevertheless, presumably we make resolutions because we have decided that it would be best to do whatever it is that we are resolving to do. But if we have already made that decision, why don't we just do it? From Socrates onwards, that question has puzzled philosophers. In the Protagoras, one of Plato's dialogues, Socrates says that no one chooses what they know to be bad. Hence choosing what is bad is a kind of error: people will do it only if they think that it is good. If we can teach people what is best, Socrates and Plato seem to have thought, they will do it. But that is a hard doctrine to swallow—much harder than eating the extra slice of cake that you know is not good for you.

Aristotle took a different view, one that fits better with our everyday experience of failing to do what we know to be best. Our reason may tell us what is best to do, he thought, but in a particular moment our reason may be overwhelmed by emotion or desire. Thus, the problem is not lack of knowledge, but the failure of our reason to master other, non-rational aspects of our nature.

That view is supported by recent scientific work showing that much of our behavior is based on very rapid, instinctive, emotionally based responses. Although we are capable of deciding what to do on the basis of rational thought processes, such decisions often prove less powerful than our instinctive feelings in moving us to action.

What does this have to do with keeping resolutions? Richard Holton, a professor of philosophy at MIT and the author of Willing, Wanting, Waiting, points out that a resolution is an attempt to overcome the problem of maintaining an intention when we expect that, at some future time, we will face inclinations contrary to our intention. Right now, we want to lose weight and we are rationally convinced that this is more important than the pleasure we will get from that extra slice of cake. But we anticipate that, faced with cake tomorrow, our desire for that rich chocolate texture will distort our reasoning so that we might convince ourselves that putting on just a little more weight doesn't really matter all that much.

To prevent that, we seek to shore up our current intention to lose weight. By making a solemn resolution and telling our family and close friends about it, we tilt the scales against succumbing to temptation. If we fail to keep our resolution, we will have to admit that we are less in control of our behavior than we had hoped, thus losing face in our own eyes and in the eyes of others about whom we care.

This fits well with what psychologists have discovered about how we can improve the odds that we will keep our resolutions. Richard Wiseman, a professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, has tracked 5,000 people who made New Year's resolutions. Only about one in ten managed to stick to what they had resolved. In his recently released book 59 Seconds, Wiseman sets out the things that you can do to make success more likely:

Break your resolution into a series of small steps;
Tell your family and friends about your resolution, thus both gaining support and increasing the personal cost of failure;
Regularly remind yourself of the benefits of achieving your goal;
Give yourself a small reward each time you achieve one of the steps towards your goal;
Keep track of your progress towards your goal, for example by keeping a journal or putting a chart on the fridge door.

Individually, each of these factors seems trivial. Collectively, they are ways of exerting our self-control not only now, but in the future as well. If we succeed, the behavior we judge to be better will become habitual—and thus no longer require a conscious act of will to keep acting in that way.

These tools for keeping a New Year's resolution can help us to make progress, not only in losing weight or staying out of debt, but also in living more ethically. We may even find that that is the best resolution to make, for our own benefit and that of others.

Philosophy is back in business

Gostei do artigo e acho que ele tem razão. Não vejo, contudo, oposição entre economia e filosofia, muito pelo contrário. Há vários exemplos de bons economistas que são ótimos filosofos, como é o caso, por ex. do Sen e do Broome. Sempre achei estranho a ausência de filosofia no curriculum dos cursos de graduação em economia.

The financial and climate crises, global consumption habits, and other 21st-century challenges call for a "killer app." I think I've found it: philosophy.

Philosophy can help us address the (literally) existential challenges the world currently confronts, but only if we take it off the back burner and apply it as a burning platform in business.

Philosophy explores the deepest, broadest questions of life—why we exist, how society should organize itself, how institutions should relate to society, and the purpose of human endeavor, to name just a few. The Wealth of Nations, a book that serves as the intellectual platform for capitalism, lays out how markets should be organized and how people should behave in such markets. The book's author, Adam Smith, was not an economist, as many believe, but a philosopher. Smith was chairman of the Moral Philosophy Dept. at Glasgow University when he wrote the book.

Like other philosophers, Smith attempted to create a new framework for understanding the world, addressing how we as humans seek alignment in our relationships and among competing interests.

The philosophical approach Smith pursued has faded from use, yet it's more relevant than ever in light of the crises our organizations and countries face. Credit, climate, and consumption crises cannot be solved through specialized expertise alone. These problems, like most issues businesses confront in the global marketplace, feature complex interdependencies that require an understanding of how political, financial, environmental, ethical, and social interests influence each other. A philosophical approach connects the dots among competing interests in an effort to create synergy. Linking competing interests requires philosophers to examine areas that modern-day domain experts too often ignore: core beliefs, ethics, and character.

When I say we need to return to a philosophical approach in relation to problem-solving, I mean that we need to broaden our understanding of problems by looking deeper at our own beliefs, values, ethics, and character, and then understand how they relate to those of others who share a stake in our problem-solving efforts.

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Os cães ladram e a caravana passa

"Este avanço de 1,1% em relação a outubro de 2009, na série com ajuste sazonal, foi o maior desde janeiro de 2001, mas o pessoal ocupado na indústria recuou (-4,1%) em relação a novembro de 2008. O número de horas pagas na indústria subiu 0,9% em relação a outubro de 2009, mas teve recuo (-3,6%) em relação a novembro de 2008. A folha de pagamento real teve recuos em ambas as comparações: -0,8% em relação a outubro de 2009 e -2,7% em relação a novembro de 2008. Os indicadores acumulados para pessoal ocupado, horas pagas e folha de pagamento real, respectivamente, ainda apresentam-se negativos, tanto no ano (-5,5%, -6,0% e -2,7%) quanto nos 12 meses (-5,2%, -5,6% e -2,0%)."(IBGE)

Bons numeros, sem dúvida, confirmando, mais uma vez, a recuperação do mercado de trabalho na indústria. É claro que a turma de sempre vai ficar chateada e apontar para o grande recuo em relação a novembro de 2008. Naturalmente, é um não argumento, mas, ..., deixa para la...como no antigo provérbio arabe - me parece - os cães ladram e a caravana passa.

O incompetente

Enquanto no grande bananão o preço da cesta básica cai ate 14,92%, ajudado, é verdade pela queda da demanda por commodities e pelo aumento da oferta, no novo paraiso "socialista" latino americano a situação macroeconômica vai de mal a pior: queda do PIB, inflação mais alta da região. A saida - um classico latino americano - é duas taxas de câmbio.

A estupida burguesia local, neste caso, tem culpa no cartório, porém, ela não é o fator mais importante. O grande responsável é o Chaves e sua política econômica "criativa", não-burguesa, cantada em verso e prosa pela turma de sempre. Felizmente Lula, não da ouvidos a este canto de sereia.

Crise na Argentina

Ótimo artigo do Bresser Pereira sobre a situação econômica e política na Argentina.

Um presidente eleito segundo todas as boas regras da democracia cria um fundo fiscal usando para isso uma parte modesta das reservas do país no banco central. O presidente desse banco, em nome da "independência do BC", opõe-se ao uso das reservas do país depositadas no banco para constituir o fundo porque o governo teria outros recursos fiscais para pagar as dívidas. A presidente do país demite o presidente do banco por decreto. Indignação geral - indignação da direita e da esquerda: dos que querem que se pague a dívida do Estado e dos que não querem. Esse país é a Argentina. A presidente é Cristina Kirchner, que, como seu marido, embora fiel à democracia, tem um estilo de governo autoritário que foi fundamental para que o país lograsse sair muito bem da grande crise de 2001. Agora, porém, em nome da democracia, da lei, e do princípio da independência do BC, a oposição de direita, que nunca se conformou com o êxito da redução da dívida externa lograda pelos Kirchner, e a oposição de uma esquerda que está sempre em busca do governo perfeito, apoiam o presidente do BC e criam uma grave crise política no país.

Não vou discutir se a demissão por decreto é legal se o presidente do BC pode continuar no cargo enquanto a Justiça resolve mantê-lo ou não. A presidente da Argentina demitiu Martín Redrado por "falta de cumprimento dos deveres de funcionário público". Redrado recusou-se a cumprir a ordem porque a lei argentina garante que o BC não estará sujeito a ordens, indicações ou instruções do Poder Executivo na formulação e na execução da política monetária. Não vou também discutir o princípio antidemocrático da independência plena dos bancos centrais. Afirmo apenas que uma "razoável" independência -como a que existe nos Estados Unidos ou no Brasil- é algo muito bom uma independência plena é um absurdo. No caso, porém, ainda que a decisão da presidente tenha elementos financeiros e esses se confundam com os problemas fiscais, sua decisão não é uma decisão de política monetária, e sim de política fiscal.

Diz respeito à forma de utilizar os recursos do Estado. Quando o presidente do BC e os opositores do governo argumentam contra a utilização das reservas "porque o governo dispõe de recursos fiscais correntes para pagar a dívida, e porque a utilização das reservas abriria espaço para maiores gastos fiscais sem aumentar o deficit público", o argumento é estritamente fiscal. Nada tem a ver com a autonomia da política monetária que justificaria a independência dos bancos centrais. Para apoiar o presidente do BC, portanto, teremos de atribuir a essa instituição não apenas autonomia monetária, mas o direito de interferir diretamente na política fiscal do governo. É isso que queremos? A ditadura dos "técnicos"? A oposição já está, inclusive, falando em impeachment de um governo que, desde a traição do vice-presidente, Julio Cobos, no caso das "retenciones" variáveis (necessárias para neutralizar a doença holandesa), ficou enfraquecido. Os argentinos ainda não descobriram o caminho do desenvolvimento econômico não perceberam que a neutralização da doença holandesa originada na agropecuária é a condição fundamental de seu desenvolvimento. Mas a maioria dos argentinos sabe que a democracia é um valor universal. Por isso, apesar da violência da oposição, a democracia não está ameaçada na Argentina é o desenvolvimento econômico que continua em questão.

Fonte: UOL

The Hollow Men, T.S.Eliot

Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy


I


We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.


II


Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom


III


This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.


IV


The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.


V


Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow


Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom


For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

A dissident in China

Artigo interessente do Ian Buruma sobre o ambiente político chines.

2009 was a good year for China. The Chinese economy still roared ahead in the midst of a worldwide recession. American President Barack Obama visited China, more in the spirit of a supplicant to an imperial court than the leader of the world’s greatest superpower. Even the Copenhagen summit on climate change ended just the way China wanted: failure in its attempt to commit China, or any other industrial nation, to making significant cuts in carbon emissions, with the United States getting the blame.

The Chinese government, under the Communist Party, has every reason to feel confident. So why did a gentle former literature professor named Liu Xiaobo have to be sentenced to 11 years in prison, just because he publicly advocated freedom of expression and an end to one-party rule?

Liu was co-author in 2008 of a petition, Charter 08, signed by thousands of Chinese, calling for basic rights to be respected. Liu is not a violent rebel. His opinions, in articles published on the Internet, are entirely peaceful. Yet he was jailed for “inciting subversion of state power.”


The notion that Liu might be capable of subverting the immense power of the Communist Party of China is patently absurd. And yet the authorities clearly believe that they had to make an example of him, to prevent others from expressing similar views.

Why does a regime that appears to be so secure consider mere opinions, or even peaceful petitions, so dangerous? Perhaps because the regime does not feel as secure as it looks.

Without legitimacy, no government can rule with any sense of confidence. There are many ways to legitimize political arrangements. Liberal democracy is only a recent invention. Hereditary monarchy, often backed by divine authority, has worked in the past. And some modern autocrats, such as Robert Mugabe, have been bolstered by their credentials as national freedom fighters.

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Desenvolvimento com justiça social

O projeto de lei que regulamenta terceirização no país, ainda não foi apresentado ao Congresso, mas já esta sendo bombardeado pelo setor empresarial do grande bananão. Reação normal e conhecida, afinal este setor sempre se colocou contra qualquer legislação de defesa dos interesses dos trabalhadores. Tão pouco o argumento contrário é original: para Casali, gerente-executivo de Relações de Trabalho da CNI, "terceirizar significa buscar redução de custos e mais qualidade para tornar a empresa competitiva, protegendo os trabalhadores"( FSP, dinheiro B7). So rindo, para não chorar...

É preciso lembrar o obvio: não há nenhum fundamento teorico para a idéia de incompatibilidade entre uma economia de mercado robusta e competitiva e a manutenção de um bom padrão de vida e direitos para os trabalhadores. Muito pelo contrário: os dois objetivos podem e devem andar juntos. Há uma serie de exemplos históricos que comprovam esta compatibilidade, assim como o desejo de alguns de abocanhar uma parcela cada vez maior do lucro em detrimento do bem estar da maioria.

É urgente retomar a agenda de um desenvolvimento econômico com justiça social e respeito as direitos da pessoa humana. Que é, alias, a definição correta do próprio desenvolvimento econômico, como nos ensina a encíclica populorum progressio e os trabalhos do economista Amartya Sen.

The Catholic Intellectual Tradition

1. The intellectual as spiritual: no intellectual endeavor can ever take us away from God. Because God is absolute truth, we hold that any attempt to discover the truth leads the person closer to God. Catholicism sees itself engaged wherever there is a genuine search for truth. Thus, no academic discipline lies, in principle, outside the intellectual tradition of Catholicism.

2. The existence of truth: despite the weakness and limitations of human understanding, the tradition maintains strongly that the human mind is capable of attaining truth. Reality does not lie beyond the human ability to understand it, at least in part. The Catholic Intellectual tradition has always embraced scholarship and academic life. The great monastic orders of medieval Europe sought to conserve and pass on the wealth of ancient scholarship.

3. The affirmation of human dignity: Human dignity, not sin, stands at the center of this intellectual tradition. The dignity of each person is founded upon the fact that each one is created in the image of God. This tradition holds firmly to the truth that each person mirrors God’s presence. The journey of human introspection and self-awareness is a spiritual journey that reveals the presence of God within.

4. Reality is a sign to be deciphered: God has written two books: nature and the Bible. This means that all that exists carries the sign of the Creator. Created reality is an expression and sign of its Author. By looking carefully at everything, the human mind can see beyond the fragmentary to grasp (even in an obscure manner) the totality of all that exists and the way in which it all has meaning. Thus, the Catholic tradition is neither fundamentalist nor literalist. Catholic universities are not Bible colleges. Symbols and allegory play a major role in the Catholic understanding of reality. Everything points beyond itself.

5. Rationality is not meant to be frustrated: The intellectual tradition Catholicism affirms that human existence is not absurd and meaning can be found. The meaning of life is the goal of all human reasoning; the tradition holds that such meaning does exist at an ultimate level (God) and that the journey toward discovery of that meaning is deeply satisfying.

6. Grace perfects, it does not suppress or destroy nature: the natural order holds the key for the journey of understanding. It is where everything begins. It lies in a continuous relationship to the realm of the divine. The mystery of the divine is revealed in and through the human person which it transforms. The journey toward truth, understanding and thus, God, is an optimistic journey despite the recognition of the human capacity for sin. The tradition identifies itself as Christian Humanism.

7. All cultures hold the seeds for this fuller understanding: In the Catholic tradition, truth is assumed to be everywhere and can be found in every culture. Even in early Christian times, pagan philosophy was seen to hold meaningful truths and helpful ways of understanding human nature (cf. Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho). These truths helped clarify the Catholic understanding of what it means to be human and how, in our nature, we are capax Dei (open to God).

8. Reason and faith exist in mutual support: for this tradition, faith and reason are not opposed to one another. Rather, they exist in a creative tension that enlivens both. Reason challenges faith to explain itself and faith challenges reason to go beyond itself. This is why philosophy has always held a prominent place in the Catholic intellectual tradition.

9. Celebrating the great mysteries of life and God’s goodness is part of our tradition. The sacramental dimension of the Catholic tradition is expressed both in the tendency to celebrate (especially with meals) and in the enormous importance the arts and music have. This is why Liturgy plays such a central role in the Catholic tradition’s self-understanding and why Catholic liturgy is so rich.

10. The conversation can always include more voices. Because of all of the above, the intellectual tradition of Catholicism likes to understand itself as a banquet, where more and more guests arrive and the conversation gets better and better. It’s a vibrant intellectual exchange that brings the past in communication with the present.

Mary Beth Ingham, C.S.J.

O filho do Paul Singer

É provavelmente o artigo mais comentado na atualidade e é, de fato, muito bom. Trata-se do trabalho do Andre Singer - filho do Paulo Singer, sobre as " raíses sociais e ideológicas do lulismo". "O artigo sugere hipóteses para compreender o realinhamento
eleitoral que teria ocorrido em 2006. O subproletariado, que sempre se manteve distante de Lula, aderiu em bloco à sua candidatura depois do primeiro mandato, ao mesmo tempo em que a classe média se afastou dela. A explicação estaria
em uma nova configuração ideológica, que mistura elementos de esquerda e de direita. O discurso e a prática, que unem manutenção da estabilidade e ação distributiva do Estado, encontram‑se na raiz da formação do lulismo".

Gostei do artigo, mas é preciso algum tempo para digeri-lo, adianto que não vejo novidade alguma na tese apresentada: para quem vive ou circula - de olhos abertos e livres do marxismo vulgar de perdizes e alhures - pela periferia paulistana é apenas a reinvenção da roda. Ela, alias, explica, também, as dificuldades(fracasso?) de certo catolicismo na periferia e o crescimento dos pentacostais...

Soros e o protecionismo financeiro

Gostei do artigo do Soros publicado ontem no jornal da Ditabranda. Não compartilho do seu pessimismo, mas concordo que há riscos, no caso americano, de uma segunda desaceleração - a performance da economia no período pós medidas emergenciais ainda é uma grande incognita. O clima político também não é nada alentador.

O ponto mais interessante do artigo é o que ele chama de "protecionismo financeiro", resultado da impossibilidade política de criar um sistema de regulamentação internacional do sistema financeiro. Confesso que não havia pensado no assunto e concordo que ele é de fato problematico. Contudo, ainda é cedo para visualizar como será o novo sistema financeiro mundial: é necessário esperar o inevitável processo de aquisição de algumas destas instituições por parte dos paises emergentes. É a hora da "xepa" para as instituições brasileiras, chinesas e indianas,entre outras.

O Capitão! meu Capitão, Walt Whitman

Pensando no meu pai, Jose Paula dos Santos, 05 de Fevereiro de 1930 - 31 de Dezembro de 2009.



Ó capitão! Meu capitão! terminou a nossa terrível viagem,
O navio resistiu a todas as tormentas, o prêmio que
buscávamos está ganho,
O porto está próximo, ouço os sinos, toda a gente está
exultante,
Enquanto segue com os olhos a firme quilha, o ameaçador e
temerário navio;
Mas, oh coração! coração! coração!
Oh as gotas vermelhas e sangrentas,
Onde no convés o meu capitão jaz,
Tombado, frio e morto.

Ó capitão! meu capitão! ergue-te e ouve os sinos;
Ergue-te – a bandeira agita-se por ti, o cornetim vibra por ti;
Para ti ramos de flores e grinaldas guarnecidas com fitas –
para ti as multidões nas praias,
Chamam por ti, as massas, agitam-se, os seus rostos ansiosos voltam-se;
Aqui capitão! querido pai!
Passo o braço por baixo da tua cabeça!
Não passa de um sonho que, no convés,
Tenhas tombado frio e morto.

O meu capitão não responde, os seus lábios estão pálidos e imóveis,
O meu pai não sente o meu braço, não tem pulso nem vontade,
O navio ancorou são e salvo, a viagem terminou e está concluída,
O navio vitorioso chega da terrível viagem com o objetivo ganho:
Exultai, ó praias, e tocai, ó sinos!
Mas eu com um passo desolado,
Caminho no convés onde jaz o meu capitão,
Tombado, frio e morto"

(Tradução de Maria de Lurdes Guimarães)

Ivy league lightbulb jokes

How many Princeton students does it take to change a lightbulb?

Two---one to mix the martinis and one to call the electrician.

How many Brown students does it take to change a lightbulb?

Eleven---one to change the lightbulb and ten to share the experience.

How many Dartmouth students does it take to change a lightbulb?

None---Hanover doesn't have electricity.


How many Cornell students does it take to change a lightbulb?

Two---One to change the lightbulb and one to crack under the pressure.

How many Penn students does it take to change a lightbulb?

Only one, but he gets six credits for it.

How many Columbia students does it take to change a lightbulb?

Seventy-six---one to change the lightbulb, fifty to protest the lightbulb's

right to not change, and twenty-five to hold a counter-protest.


How many Yale students does it take to change a lightbulb?

None---New Haven looks better in the dark.


How many Harvard students does it take to change a lightbulb?

One---he holds the bulb and the world revolves around him


How many MIT students does it take to change a lightbulb?

five ---one to design a nuclear-powered one that never needs changing,

one to figure out how to power the rest of Boston using that

nuked lightbulb,

two to install it,

and one to write the computer program that controls

the wall switch

Funeral do meu pai

Meu pai perdeu esta tarde a única batalha que ninguem pode vencer. Curiosamente foi no mesmo dia e quase a mesma hora em que ele se casou com a minha mãe em 1955.O velorio e enterro é no Cemiterio Congonhas no Jardim Marajoara.