Dear Friends

I will continue to work on the hypothesis that the action impacts of dr yunus legacy depend on a small group of educators more than any other profession or leadership capability

One illustration of my hypothesis is that on Monday 1200 students across 45 colleges of Georgia will be brainstorming job creation stimulated by a competition format whose inspiration ys yunus and what he briefs business judges to value most in youth's learning by doing  http://www.usg.edu/social_business_microcredit/judges/

If the format works, the goal is to involve every us state across america in such job creation competitions. My question to you would be : (how quickly) could we start up something similar in India? The reason why I expect that Monday will work is that it is emerging from 11 years of work led by one of Dr Yunus' bangladeshi compatriots http://www.ofcvc.org/ofcpromo.html in which educators spotted that the least endowed universities across usa had no entrepreneur programs. Today over 100 colleges share the missing program.

So education is the biggest development multiplier of all if we can identify those programs founded round that purpose, of which I am sure CMS www.cmseducation.org is one with over half a century of empowering 40000 students a year to find their own greatest service capability as world citizens. 

thanks

chris macrae

ps in USA there is also an interesting converse case; I have just done a 90 minute interview of someone who founded the original entrepreneur centre at MIT 25 years ago; that and empowering experiments in digital media to be one of MIT's 5 main schools (that they calls labs) has made MIT (if you ranked its alumni as a nation) as the 11th most valuable job creating economy in the world.

MIT's number 1 lesson is very simple- there educators see it as their responsibility to help choose what sort of capital to match with what sort of student inventors lifetimes; better yet for microeconomics, the (macroeconomic) capitalists they feel are not likely to advance the human lot they send over to Harvard!

Dear Michael/Johnny cc charles/ erich/jean-noel/benedict/john/melissa I have been over to see Yunus four times in this crisis year of peak macroeconomics.  I am now his 3rd most trusted person in DC for hosting informal collaborations;  he is allowing my friends to host a technology roundtable where we try and find him some world class partnerships during his visit to DC mainly to testify to congress - two thirds of whom voted for him last fall as youth's genius economist (in line with my dad's view). The aim is to pilot a tech for job creation roundtable process that can be replicated at the 3 greatest events at capital cities yunus participates in per year. We are working on getting yunus a royal invitation to celebrate commonwealth and youth in the fortnight prior to London's Sustainability Olympics. Prior to that November 2011 Queen Sofia is hosting last microcreditsummit (part 1) of the 15 year series near madrid Nov 2011. YUNUS CONGRESS VISIT TECH ROUNDTABLE It seems to me that the best place to host this dialogue is the french embassy in DC. France has been yunus greatest supporter since 2005 and been rewarded with a record 650000 startups in the last year. I will be talking to the chief economist at the embassy on june 6 - if it would fit your diary if I dropped into Georgetown Business School before or after plwase say. When you sampled 200 yunus books for me in business school class of 2010/11, I was told their compass network would help advance ideas on social business stockmarket. Yunus got very excited to hear that last fall 2010 but I dont seem to have any news on what happened.  While we dont know the exact week yet as yunus and obama are finalising their diaries, it is likely end september. The Norman Macrae foundation sponsored Journal of Social Buisness will bring its 3rd issue out on that date focusinjg on microceonomists whose methods can sustain youth's world and return the net generation to pathway my dad and I mapped in 1984 http://www.normanmacrae.com/netfuture.html cheers chris macrae 1-301 881 1655

hello my family wants to provide free loans for 10 lunches on bangladesh at 40's 10 most exciting ideas for net generation to action in 2010s - embargo date for relaying this mail is 4 march 2011 as we dont want princess anne's this week in bangladesh opening nursing college to get into conflicts

here is example of proposed lunch - your ideas on other 9 most exciting bangaldesh at 40 solutions to net geneartion of end poverty world welcomed

PROPOSED lunch 1: exciting motion for net generation to solve : a nurse in every village is the only way towards sustainable healthcare anywhere

 proposed convenor granville family - proposed location cambridge

proposed guests include keith peters and cam donaldson and zasheem; judy pitt and anne duffill (from the glaswegian mcdonalds nursing family)

proposed dates - before end of June- charlotte has to finish her finals first but getting the inviation out in next 28 days helps our campaign to see yunus celebarted as chief consultant to big society bank and the year of youth celebrations prior to oympics

---

ALL I KNOW ABOUT HEALTH IS~- so SURE YOU CA DO BETTER

my matenral tree in india were mainly nurses including one who got a silver medal for midwifery about 125 years ago which I hope is a useful but small momento for the grameen's museum of nursing

my dads 1984 survey on healthcare commended the NHS for its first exciting year after which it died in terms of being systemically economic (ie serving future generations better, making nursing and other medical jobs communally rewarded and the whole ever more affordable and focused on what healthcare is common sense for all youth to celebrate ) -if you feel any of dads other 2000 writings impacted on this topic please send a link which we will compile at http://www.worldeconomist.net/ as a joint resource of exciting lunches

--------------------------------------

It is expected that each lunch could be turned into some sort of oxford uniion debating script so that the debate could be replayed wherever youth are concerned about the rights of educational systems and respect for womens networksd to produce a nurse for every village -eg social business student clubs and hubs and utime myplaces -forty  of which it is a job of the olympics committee to have made sustanable by summer 2012 once anne and sarah and anne have done their below the radar connecting of great good and youth- though I am sure this team could do with any help you can offer- we are preparing the tower of london as guest accomodation for the ceos of any of the 33 oympics global brands who do not play their full part in this! if a social busienss loan is needed for a special shekh site at te tower I am sure that can be financed- perhaps mo ibrahim or rochard branson should be asked to be first to contribute

. It is expected that most of these scripts would be prnted in journal of social business.

---

Would Your City Publish a Special Issue of Yunus Journal of Social Business? When would be most exciting 2010s moment for your world citizens?

• Posted by isabella wm on February 18, 2011 at 11:39am
• View Discussions

.
coming soon the most amazing story - how what started from a lunch in paris at HEC business school in 2005 has become the fastest growing subject of the knowledge generation - social business community building and investment funds with over 100 experts connecting interdisciplinary ideas on how to make 2010s the most exciting decade for youth and net geneartion

every developed nation has billion dollars of dormant accounts

a big society bank and net generation can turn these into sustainable business models making 2010s youth and communities most exciting decade (in yunus language this is called social business stockmarkets and is already what danone communities is doing with sarkozy's youth minister)

YUNUS IN EXILE AS DADS NUMBER 1 worldwide youth's most value multiplying economist

if yunus can be chief consultant on Big S process (invites princess anne , chartles, cameron ..)

 uk is the test market with annie getting 40 myplace youth cities franchising stuff that needs social business funding once its been incubated in myplaces by people jamie oliver, dragons den local shows co-produced by bbc with a little help from eg gareth malone and artists who entertain billionnaires who could invest micro up etc; and with biillions of corporate dollars gearing up to make uk olympics meaningful to youth

get cameron and yunus as chief consultants to each other by july and we can report back at queen sofias november summit with special reports by prince charles on energy projects emerging out of myplaces, and added reporting from dads old friends

mary robinsoon on why ireland needs to use its dormant accounts this way

romano prodi and bersculone (who I can never spell) in why italy needs this

luxembourg and monaco royals can join in if they wish

youth (eg 100 university microcredit club leadrs) can start viralising ideas of projects that such good news cold fiund out of every community

chris usa 301 881 1655

www.worldeconomist.net

references

The last Dhaka Hub Leadership Tour - contact jonathan; virtual china tour contact robert

 can 23 corporates celebrate youth http://socialbusiness.crowdmap.com/reports/view/83

can google.org out of africa save web

http://socialbusiness.crowdmap.com/reports/view/55

can 10000 girls develop social IQ test for driving your community bank

http://socialbusiness.crowdmap.com/reports/view/38

Peter Drucker and Norman Macrae lived almost the same learning curve but Peter was about 10 years senior. They were both born at the same part of the world to itinerant families (Normans dad moved assignents every 3 years as  britisg consular). They first met when Norman was about 13 and Peter about 23 at a meal hosted in the British Consular in Moscow around 1936 when Stalin's purges were going unrecognised by the rest of the world. So much so that Russia was regarded as a good guy by the allies a few years later.

there is a great virtual community in Drucker's honor; its current tags :

Produced by

Tags

Auto industry Competition Customer Customer values Economy Educat Education Effective management Effectiveness Environment Immigration Income inequality Innovation Leadership Management Measuring impact Non-profits Partnership Performance Performance Measures Planned Abandonment Politics Responsibility Social Media Teamwork Values Volunteering Work and society

What should a journal of new economics contain. Re-reading 40 years of my dad's work - the immensity of agendas is huge. We need to establish a culture where raising big questions is valued more than rushing to answers Here are some remarks dad made that most made me fall off my cosy seat Stockmarkets will need to be completely transformed- the conflict will be between people investing in the future of the place and global entities thinking they are accaountable to no particular society's employment and development needs. We may as well design 20 stockmarkets anew around the 20 greatest needs that all people need sustained at community levels  Currencies can't go on being printed as paper money by governments 3rd quarter Century economists turned against the entrepreneurial origins of the profession as most became hired by the big get bigger or confused media imagery with the deeper values of unique organisational purspose Economists who do not help protect the public from any sector (including place government) whose proportion of human spend increases exponentially up cannot claim themselves to be economic

In searches being made for a forthcoming book Joy of Economics, I would be interested to know which of 4 segments readers of this journal wish to profile themselves in. The segmentation arises from 2 questions:   Q1 Is the prime purpose of the origin of economics to invest in advancing the human lot of our next generations?  Q2 Looking back at the 3rd Quarter of the 20th Century, did the West’s biggest nations accidentally change the future history of economics so that within their borders it stopped investing in next generations

 

A) Prime reasoning of economics was investing in youth but cannot be so in the future	B) Prime reasoning of economics will be and always has been investing in next generations
D) Prime reasoning of economics never was and never will be investing in next generations	C) Prime reason of Adam Smith economics was not investing in youth’s future but can be in Net Generation’s first quarter of Millennium 3

 

If, like my dad Norman Macrae you feel able to identify with that band of internationalist Scots who flow across borders, armed with little more than the bagpipe, you are probably a born optimist segment B.

 

ou may also consider B for Bangladesh (40 years young in 2011) and Social Business as clues to 2010s being youth’s most exciting decade - if you can help network the greatest goals humans can aspire to and design systems to value.

 

If you are in segment C, I would most like to linkin[i] with you and understand what non-economic profession helps your community of practice or emotional intelligence enjoy the missions impossible of Future capitalism

 

If you are in segment A, you may well be an old school Economist judging by these words penned in 1943 on The Economist’s centenary: “it is still possible by social action to create a world of justice freedom and fraternity, and of material welfare ... we have yet to see the best of the journey: In this great caravan, the journal of opinion, if it be humble and honest has its place. The Economist has stayed with the caravan for longer than is given to most. It hopes to stay great while longer”

 

If you are in segment D viewing economics as the “Dismal Science”  -well if you can find 100 people like you who are prepared to meet for one day in what my innovation mentor Harrison Owen calls Open Space technology, then my family will put $10,000 towards sponsoring a trial event of this kind. We don’t understand why economics in net gen age needs to be dismal when it could be joyful.  But then I am just a statistician who likes mapping futures' exponentials and doesn’t believe in being over-governed by history of how much the past quarter extracted.

netizens and future capitals contributions to this dialogue most welcome either to info@worldcitizen.tv or ...

http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/We_create_more_jobs_than_US_NASSCOM_Chief_-nid-76500.html We create more jobs than U.S: NASSCOM Chief By   PTI Sunday, 02 January 2011, 17:58 Hrs   Washington: India is a net job creator for U.S. companies, not the other way around, Nasscom Chairman Som Mittal has said strongly refuting the public perception that outsourcing and free trade agreements are responsible for America's current economic woes. "India is a net job creator for U.S. companies, not the other way around. The Indo-U.S. economic relationship benefits the American economy and its job market in many important and tangible ways," Mittal wrote in an opinion piece in the Seattle Times. The U.S. has emerged as a preferred destination for Indian investment. In fact, India now ranks second, behind the UAE, in the list of fastest-growing foreign investors in the U.S., he argued in his article. Observing that India has never sought publicity for its commercial connections to the U.S., Mittal said India it has quietly become both a major investor in America and a significant destination for American goods and services. "It has a rapidly growing population of consumers hungry for products of many kinds. And unlike other large economies that have been suffering through recessions in recent years, India has increased its total outward foreign direct investment and devoted an increasing share of that largesse to the American market in need of financial support," he said. Referring to a recent study by Ernst & Young, which was commissioned by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry, Mittal said it found that Indian companies have increased their investment in the U.S. by more than $20 billion over the past five years. According to the study, those investments have supported the creation of more than 65,000 American jobs. The study also revealed another welcome trend: an increasing percentage of India's outward-directed investment is going to the U.S. In the past two fiscal years alone, roughly 20 percent of Indian companies acquisitions abroad were in the U.S., and that percentage is still rising, he said. In fiscal 2009 and 2010, Indian companies made 536 foreign acquisitions and 105 of them were in the US. During the June quarter of last year, Indian companies completed 101 outbound acquisitions of which nearly a quarter were American firms. The companies that were purchased tended to be in the same industries that Americans fear are losing the highest number of jobs to India. According to the study, information technology was the fastest-growing area of outbound investment, followed by manufacturing and pharmaceuticals.

hello Joy of Economics networks 1 2 : help!!....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................   there are 3 components of this in dad's work : my trouble is I dont fully understand the classical economics one he wrote about in early 1960s on capital markets (I only found his books on this _London Capital market & Sunshades in October after he became ill) this is what I think he said ("right old muddle") linking in to the quotes on the last page of the consider bangladesh leaflet issue 1 there would be a NW conflict between those institutions that encouraged people to invest in the compound development of their place - eg paper currency and national government and all power-over you hierarchies of place gov AND  electronic-speed stockmarkets if these went global by professions and professors (MBAS) rewarding those who 1 destroy compound inter-generational investment in any particular places people (eg hunting out cheapest labour)  and 2 destroy long-term compound purpose of a sector's greatest responsibility not to compound risk (eg rewarding 90 day extraction and externalisation across borders) so any help on understanding reconcilation of above is earnestly sought  before I snailmail  to eg nobel economists, andr nobel peacemakers as alan suggested usa today - USATODAY.com  to see if any of them will join the board of journal of social business knowing this is its forbidden question; ditto I need to ltter write to the 10 people dad mentored most; the question is probably also the hidden agenda of consider bangladesh becoming 10 times more important to freeing global markets than dad's consider japan in 1962 by raising a debate between dhaka and tokyo (including dad's friends at JICA, UK embassy in tokyo and emperor's family - and then wherever china's leadership invests in people); I dare say it is also the central question to microcreditsummit contributing to exciting 2010s as well as microtechsummit that I need to write to craig barrett about the other two streams of dads work: mapping & media-designing open system designs (network =system**N) entrepreneueurs and youth need most in service and death of distance digital economies measuring trust, transparency and exponentails of sustanability are easy for me after 35 years of work on them but helping moderate classical western economist conflict on capital markets, currencies, other non-hippocratic oaths going on in a goldman sachs or a mckinseys or egov of a capitol hill is way beyond me (and I should apologise to people like sofia and mostofa for eg 69th birthday circle's combination of missions impossible) to plant a USA reconcilation - suggestion could be for vidar, sam and monica to set up the  beyond wall street economics thinktank either side of yunus speech to congress;  perhaps issue 2 of journal of social busienss could be readying papers on how this connects with queen sofia's 2011 micrtocredit summit goals I suspect that dhaka is well placesd with its 2 most important banks investing in digital global village economy including egov (grameen) , net city banking (brac) chris These search terms are highlighted: right old muddle economist   extract hansard Minister for the Civil Service (Transfer of Functions) HC Deb 20 January 1982 vol 16 cc367-89 Mr. Ian Wrigglesworth (Thornaby) Regarding Civill Service Department (CSD) it can be said that the functions should be totally within the Treasury, as they used to be and as Sir Derek Rayner suggested. It can also be argued that there should be a separate Department. But we are ending up with a right old muddle, as the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Garrett) illustrated, by having some responsibilities in one Department and others in another. A proper personnel and management function cannot be carried in any organisation with such a split. I fear that the Government will go no way down the road towards the extra efficiency and cost cutting that they wish to achieve.It has been implicitly or explicitly accepted by previous speakers that the CSD was not a success. It was not the engine of reform that it should have been. It did not carry the weight in Whitehall or among Ministers that it should have done, but that is not a case for abolishing it. Mr. Peter Viggers (Gosport) The Civil Service is our biggest business and is perhaps the best candidate for improved efficiency by way of computerisation. There are two ways in which this improvement can go. Either the improvement can be accepted, with the Civil Service welcoming the opportunity to increase its efficiency by using new techniques, or the service can adopt a Luddite attitude and say that it will have computerisation and improved technology only if there is no loss of jobs, which would be a reactionary and unhelpful attitude. My reason for making this point is that there is an article in this week's edition of The Economist in which it is said that the civil service unions have told the government they will not work any new technology equipment unless they receive an assurance from the cabinet that no civil servant will be laid off as a result … the treasury has been in favour of giving such an assurance in order to 'maintain goodwill'. The article is either unhelpful or misleading, and it would be useful if my hon. Friend could comment on it. Mr. Richard Wainwright (Colne Valley) I, too, am grateful to the Opposition for enabling us to have this debate. But no amount of informed speeches can dispel the air of profound unreality which pervades debates on the control of the Civil Service. I felt just the same about the pleasant and stimulating sittings of the Select Committee under the chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon): although the issue was an interesting one to discuss, nothing that we decided would enable the uncontrollable to be controlled. If any civil servant—apart from the top echelon—were asked to judge between control by a Lord President of the Council preoccupied, very successfully, with Zimbabwe, and a Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster preoccupied with the intricacies of leading the House of Lords, he would be tempted to use the words of an oriental potentate who was unwisely called upon to judge the finals of the Cleethorpes bathing beauty contest and dismayed the populace by saying "Both are worse"

meredith whitney -informative on next bubble - us state and sub-statebudgets are in rotten state with pension nightmares involving public sector

she's also three quarters rioght that much corporate goodwill (vt  uw) will turn out to obervalued -for 20 yerass now intangible valuation has bee the bigegst mathjs mistake ever perpetrated by professions- many corporations are over-valued because of not understanding compound risks; some newer knowledge newtorking organsiations are undervalued; thiose that spend larghe amounts on adverstising are often those most overvalued
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/29/meredith-whitney_n_743300.html

http://www.meredithwhitneyllc.com/research.php

http://joyofeconomics.com

norman macrae party speech leaving The Economist (1988) after 40 years:
in the 1970s the Swedish Nobel prize committee had been getting into controversy with its choices so around 1977 it thought it would poll about 50 university business schools. This was fine except for the univesrity in Japan which doesnt have business schools. This university felt it had to nominate a foreigner who had written someting about entrepreneurship that had been translated into Japanese... and so it was that  Japanese univesrity which I had never heard of nominated me for a Nobel. Now alas of the 4 million people then in the world, I expect there were only two who thought this was a sensible idea. One was me; the other was presumably the vice chancellor of the quite unpronouncable Japanese university. Still I spent the next few months eagerly accepting invitations to lecture in sweden and on the day of the announcement hung around our room with the tape machine looking nonchalant with a transistor in my ear. In the event they gave the prize to some American called Apfelstrudel or something who had invented business schools or written a very succesful book on management theory.

So I thought, ah well, perhsps next year if I am very tactful. Then that Wednesday The Economist proofs with a note on the Nobel came over my desk.   

Schumpeter (Business) — named for the economist Joseph Schumpeter, this column was established on September 2009 and is written by Adrian Wooldridge.

• Bagehot (Britain) — named for Walter Bagehot (pronounced /ˈbædʒət/), nineteenth-century British constitutional expert and early editor of The Economist. Since July 2010 it has been written by David Rennie.
• Charlemagne (Europe) — named for Charlemagne, Emperor of the Frankish Empire.
• Lexington (United States) — named for Lexington, Massachusetts, the site of the beginning of the American Revolutionary War. Since June 2010 it has been written by Peter David.
• Buttonwood (Finance) — named for the buttonwood tree where early Wall Street traders gathered. Until September 2006 this was available only as an on-line column, but it is now included in the print edition. It is written by Philip Coggan.
• Banyan (Asia) — named for the banyan tree, this column was established in April 2009 and focuses on various issues across the Asian continent, and is written by Dominic Ziegler.

• Gentlemen, a depression is for capitalism like a good, cold douche. (To economics students, recorded by RL Heilbroner, The Embarrassment of Economics, 1996)^[1]
• Innovation is the market introduction of a technical or organisational novelty, not just its invention. (Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, 1911)

[edit] Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Third Edition)

• I felt it my duty to take,and to inflict upon the reader, considerable trouble in order to lead up effectively to my paradoxical conclusion: capitalism is being killed by its achievements.
  • Preface, pg.xiv

• However, if Marx had not been more than a purveyor of phraseology, he would be dead by now.
  • Part I, Chapter I, pg.5

• Geniuses and prophets do not usually excel in professional learning, and their originality, if any, is often due precisely to the fact that they do not.
  • Part I, Chapter III, pg.21

• As a matter of fact, capitalist economy is not and cannot be stationary. Nor is it merely expanding in a steady manner. It is incessantly being revolutionized from within by new enterprise, i.e., by the intrusion of new commodities or new methods of production or new commercial opportunities into the industrial structure as it exists at any moment.
  • Part I, Chapter III, pg.31

• For one thing, to predict the advent of big business was considering the conditions of Marx's day an achievement in itself.
  • Part I, Chapter III, pg.34

• Lack of outlets, excess capacity, complete deadlock, in the end regular recurrence of national bankruptcies and other disasters-perhaps world wars from sheer capitalist despair-may confidently be anticipated. History is as simple a that.
  • Part I, Chapter IV, pg.51

• The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U. S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation-if I may use that biological term-that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.
  • Part II, Chapter VII, pg.83

• Situations emerge in the process of creative destruction in which many firms may have to perish that nevertheless would be able to live on vigorously and usefully if they could weather a particular storm.
  • Part II, Chapter VIII, pg.90

• Nothing is so retentive as a nation's memory.
  • Part II, Chapter VIII, pg.100

• Want and effective demand are not the same thing. If they were, the poorest nations would be the ones to display the most vigorous demand.
  • Part II, Chapter X, pg.114

• The stock exchange is a poor substitute for the Holy Grail.
  • Part II, Chapter XII, Section II, pg.137

• It is quite possible that future generations will look upon arguments about the inferiority of the socialist plan as we look upon Adam Smith's argument about joint stock companies which, also, were simply false.
  • Part III, Chapter XVII, pg.196

• The capitalist process shapes things and souls for socialism.
  • Part III, Chapter XIX, Section I, pg.220

• Nothing is so treacherous as the obvious.
  • Part IV, Chapter XX, Section I, pg.235

• To realize the relative validity of one's convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian.
  • Part IV, Chapter XX, Section III, pg.243

• In economic life competition is never completely lacking, but hardly ever is it perfect.
  • Part IV, Chapter XXII, pg 271

• The trouble with Russia is not that she is socialist but that she is Russia.
  • Part V, Chapter XXVIII, pg.404

• This civilization is rapidly passing away, however. Let us rejoice or else lament the fact as much as everyone of us likes; but do not let us shut our eyes to it.
  • The March into Socialism, pg.419

(google translation of Swedish note by JanErik Larrson )

There are moments you never forget, people you never forget.Norman Macrae is one such person. The meeting took place in spring 1993.

In the latest issue of The Economist devoted three pages to an obituary of the recently deceased Norman Macrae. It is well worth reading, for Macrae was in truth a very special person.

Few have the time and had his ability to "see beyond the next corner". He was the journalist who first "discovered" Japan's future economic greatness. It was the 1962nd He predicted the Soviet case, with a thorough analysis very early.

Most of his career, he worked at The Economist - a large part of the time as an assistant editor.

I had read some of MacRae books with future predictions, and I took in 1993, who was communications director at SAF - contact with him. I asked him to come to Sweden to write a book about Sweden 2015th

He came here. The cause-and language-knowing Peter Stein guided him for a few weeks by Sweden.

After the trip we met. And there is that moment I remember so well.

Swedish economy then was not in particularly good shape. It was just months after the big devaluation. Few saw any really successful future for Sweden.

Norman said at the outset that Sweden has a bright future ahead of them.

I was amazed.

What did he find?

Well, he replied:

"You have a pretty well-run public sector. There is the embryo of your future. But nothing will happen until you are privatizing the public sector. Lets you loose the talent that is there now, so you will have a fantastic new export sector. "

It is five years away from 2015 but just as incredible as Norman's prediction seemed likely in 1993 as it opens today 17 years later.

Norman Macrae book was published in 1993 by Ekerlids publishers. It's called "The new Viking - a future history of the Swedish 1995 - 2015".

I see now in The Economist  that Norman in 1991 wrote an article entitled "A Future History of Privatisation". As the Economist points out, this was a time when few believed in the market, then the confidence in the power of the state's ability to add life to the right were high.

Still, much remains to be done to get there, Norman Macrae thought Sweden would reach. But of course it is possible to achieve much more in the next legislature.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/91b55940-809f-11df-be5a-00144feabdc0.html

Journalist who delighted in paradox

By Clive Crook

Published: June 26 2010 01:02 | Last updated: June 26 2010 01:02

Norman Macrae was a journalist with an unrivalled ability to foresee the future. A man of modest renown but great reach and lasting influence, he was the first, in 1962, to see that Japan would become a world-leading manufacturer. He advocated privatising state-owned industries and services when the idea was seen as insane. He predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall. He said the Soviet Union would collapse as well; unlike others who said they thought so too, he was not the least bit surprised when it did.

Macrae, who has died at the age of 86, worked for nearly 40 years at The Economist, first as a writer – mostly without a byline – and then for 23 years as deputy editor, guiding the weekly’s thinking on economics, politics and technology. He left his mark not just on the opinions but also on the character of what he called the “world’s favourite viewspaper”. In his time, this singular publication expanded its readership enormously.

He was an intellectual, a deep thinker, and he believed that journalism should be about ideas. Leading by example, he had a great many of them, often before the world was quite ready. He was an optimist and, despite falling out occasionally with office equipment, a technophile. At the dawn of the personal computer he foresaw a networked world. He anticipated cloud computing. He probably coined the term “telecommuting”. He thought that human ingenuity was boundless, so long as it was allowed to flourish.

Ideologically, he was hard to pin down. He believed in individual initiative and private enterprise, trusted in progress, and viewed the state with suspicion. His loathing of communism started early. The son of a diplomat, he was born in what is now Kaliningrad and educated at Mill Hill school in England. “My father was British consul in Moscow in 1935-38,” he wrote. “I had summer holidays from school there at the height of Stalin’s purges. Russian members of the embassy staff, including fellow teenagers like some of the maids, were disappearing, probably to be shot.”

After war service he went to Cambridge, where he read economics, and soon after joined The Economist, where he was to stay until his retirement in 1988. Under a series of different editors – he aspired to the top job but did not dwell on being passed over three times – he was a dominating presence at the editorial meetings that shaped the paper’s line. Editing stories overnight before pages went to press – he sometimes slept in the office and he was known for his crumpled suits – he erred on the side of rigour. While Brian Beedham, foreign editor for many years and a comparably powerful figure, formed The Economists’s line on international affairs, Macrae patrolled all other terrain.

He admired the US and was fascinated by it. But he was not a conservative, least of all of the modern American sort. He disliked religiosity, and thought war disgusting. He had been an RAF navigator in bombing runs over Germany: “a public-sector [job], with public-sector productivity ... creating a slum in the heart of our continent”. He saw the need to stop health spending swallowing the US economy, and contemplated solutions unlikely to be endorsed by Sarah Palin: “There will need to be recognition that it is a dreadful waste of resources for either the state or insurers to spend $20,000 on keeping an old man alive and in pain for an extra few weeks”.

In macroeconomic policy, he was all for deficit spending and incomes policy until well after the arrival of Margaret Thatcher. In due course he switched to monetarism – but he needed to be persuaded. He was never a reflexive contrarian. He cared too little for fashionable opinion to oppose it on purpose. He thought it all through for himself, took nobody else’s wisdom on trust, and followed the analysis where it led.

Sometimes, that could be anywhere. He could chase an initially plausible line of argument right off the charts. He thought, for instance, that information technology would soon free workers to move to low-tax jurisdictions and drive public spending almost down to nothing. Thus, the personal computer was the end of big government.

One day, maybe: it is going more slowly than he hoped. Macrae was not one to clutter an idea with too many qualifications. He had a mighty appetite for information, but when he was framing an argument some facts were more equal than others. Inconsistencies might be drawn to his attention: he would repurpose them as paradoxes, in which he delighted. He would rather be bold, even if later proven wrong (not that he expected to be). Critics of Macrae, and of The Economist, complained of arrogance.

He was not arrogant. He thought that the worst thing was to be dull, and he could not be dull if he tried. Working at The Economist with no byline, colleagues observed, cost Macrae the fame he might otherwise have enjoyed. It is questionable. The paper was lucky to have him, but it returned the favour. He worked for excellent editors who understood his value.

They, and the magazine’s ethos of joint intellectual property, curbed his eccentricities while indulging his curiosity. He adored the magazine and the feeling was mutual. Macrae’s mission to sharpen the arguments of subordinates aroused surprisingly little rancour. He was amiable, generous and wonderfully easy to amuse. You knew Norman was in the office because you could hear him laughing. He and The Economist were a perfect fit.

Macrae was awarded Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun in 1988 and appointed CBE the same year. He married Janet Kemp in 1949; she died in 1994. They had a daughter, Gillian, who died in 1989, and a son, Christopher.

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Dear Matthew
while I realise you wrote this last year, it interests me a lot http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/03/the_economist_1.php
 
1 as one of the posters said - norman macrae must be rolling in his grave except he is alive and kicking
 
2 back in 1984 we forecast a mother of all media wars between professionals advocating macroeconomic or microeconomic globalsiation - only one of two's opposite system could sustan the world http://www.normanmacrae.com/netfuture.html
 
my father believes that bangladesh - muhammad yunus and fazle abed - are Yes WE Can's epicentre of microeconomics sanity and hi-trust systems design , and so exponentially sustainable futures for all our generations;  I was over there recently faclitating a 69th birthday dialogue for Muhammad Yunus so that in the event that your paper might be interested in an article by Yunus or Abed please say

chris macrae http://journalistsforhumanity.com
 

Exponential History of Destruction of Goodwill by Globalisation Economy - 1988-2008 - see the curve we now need to bend before the 2010s  http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/economy/ make 1930s slumps look rosy -anchored on 1984 maps (macrae.tv - the risk of macroeconomic chicanery)

1988 wholly erroneous brand valuation algorithm invented promotes the greatest loss of sustainability by the communications profession possible to govern through wrong metrics - sets the scene for the big 5 global accountants to deisgn greatest compound risk maths round every type of global profession's most speculative interests in maintaining its industrial age and hyper-separtaion monopolies - not a good start for an age whose main economic opportunbities involved truth of connectivity and integration of localities equitably into global

criis of opportunity and threat scoop given to The Economist to write up as year of brand, which it does but then ignores in the ways that it questions media and intangibles economics for next 20 years

Will the 21st century be a re-run of 20th Century. The macroeconomics start looks dismally similar. Instead of Archduke Ferdinand we have had one George W Bush. Instead of 1914 being the time when peoples and national empiring systems compounded so much pent-up lack of collaboration and cross-cultural loss of community care, we have 2014 as the year when a networked planet will see if we reached millennium goals set by the world's leadesrs in 2000 in apparent concurrance with the 1984 future history scenario of sustainably investing in how we go local to global: By the 00's man recognised differences in incomes and expectations betwen rich and poor nations as the biggest worldwide risk. 

Oh unlucky generation. Imagine being born in Northern hemispehere 1897 into an adulthood of 2 world wars and a slump. My daughter was born in Washington Dc in 1997. Macroeconomics dismal arrogance is something upwith which my friends and I will not exponentially put.

Today's washington post invites your comments on

That Sinking Feeling As attempts to fix the U.S. economy have repeatedly backfired.

THE GREAT INFLATION AND ITS AFTERMATH The Past and Future of American Affluence By Robert J. Samuelson | THE RETURN OF DEPRESSION ECONOMICS AND THE CRISIS OF 2008 By Paul Krugman
 -  Reviewed by David Smick

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Until recently the Nobel prize winners list for peace and economics haven't helped the future however profound the pasts of some of the worthies. 

As Dr Muhammad Yunus won the peace prize 2006,  thus has an entrepreneurial revolution come to Nobel. 

As Alan Webber says the next step for humanity would be to merge the peace and economics prize and celebrate yunus as the first double recipient. Back to Nordica reality, the 2008 Nobel Ecomomics Prize goes to Krugman who is actually worth some practice time with. Forbes says this of Krugman:  After nearly 30 years, the Swedish Academy has returned to international trade awarding the Nobel Prize to Princeton economist Paul Krugman. World Economist's reason for seconding this laureate is his 2004 exposure of the 5 Ponti Schemes that you can now officially commission a big 5 global accountant to audit for you -that is if you are big enough as a global -as Krugman said the first question to ask after Enron and Andersen is how many more Enrons are out there? If a few more western economists or journalists had joined his line of questioning we wouldn't have had the wall street meltdown and global slump

 - god save us from banks and macroeconomists and journalists who have become gurus rather that free market questioners
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extract FT blog 27 non 08 martin wolf
One might not expect much from economists, but one would surely expect them to warn us of a crisis on this scale. Some humility is in order -The difficulty was that we all tend to look at just one bit of the clichéd elephant in the room. Monetary economists looked at monetary policy. Financial economists looked at risk management. International macroeconomists looked at global imbalances. Central bankers focused on inflation. Regulators looked at Basel capital ratios and even then only inside the banking system. Politicians enjoyed the good times and did not ask too many questions... the few who dared warn us included :

Avinash Persaud, who told us early and often that the risk-management models on which regulators foolishly relied were absurd individually and lethal collectively, a point also made by John Eatwell; Kenneth Rogoff, who warned of the US external deficit; Wynne Godley, who warned no less powerfully of the domestic financial imbalances associated with those external imbalances; Charles Dumas and Brian Reading of Lombard Street Research, who warned of the global imbalances; Roger Bootle of Capital Economics, who pointed out the fantasy of believing that we could become rich by selling second-hand houses to one another at ever more exorbitant prices; Raghuram Rajan of Chicago Business School, who identified the frailty of the new financial capitalism; Bernard Connolly of AIG, who warned of the ongoing “Ponzi game” and George Magnus of UBS, who foretold the consequent “Minsky moment”; Stephen King of HSBC, who argued that US growth was built on sand; Andrew Smithers of Smithers and Co and Martin Weale of the National Institute, who told us that UK fiscal policy was far too loose; Bill White of the Bank for International Settlements who insisted again and again that monetary policy should not ignore asset prices and associated credit explosions; and Nouriel Roubini, of course, who was Dr Doom before almost anybody else.

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If Florida could end malaria over 70 years ago, can anyone share with us what's the biggest reason why we can't end all malaria deaths by 2015