Angelin Preljocaj, Snow White, Michael Powell. The 7 dwarfs coming out of holes in the wall, suspended in lines, like spiders, is a powerful image in Preljocaj Snow White’ s Ballet. However, it is the image of the Queen dancing initially in high heels and wearing a Jean-Paul Gaultier dress that mostly entices the viewers. One really enjoys everything in the Ballet but the character of the Queen is one notch up there, together with her two “cats”. Another catching point is the end of the Ballet when the Queen has to walk over the burning ashes. The message is visually conveyed by giving her two red shoes. Yes, for all you movie buffs out there, one cannot avoid bringing to mind Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Red Shoes. In both cases, the Queen in Preljocaj‘s Snow White cannot stop dancing (jumping around), while in Red Shoes whoever puts on the crimson ballet slippers is also compelled to dance forever. Such was indeed the fate of Moira Shearer in the fabulous 1948 film and of Céline Galli (in the version I saw) in the 2008 Preljocaj inspired choreography.

Keynes, Ideology, Pragmatism. In the 1990s the idea (or ideology) of letting the markets regulate themselves flourished. Alongside, travelled the belief that the size of the government should be contained, favouring a smaller public sector as the obvious thing to pursue. It was also interesting to observe the fashionable idea of the “expectational view of fiscal policy”. In other words, if cuts in government spending appear to the public as a serious attempt to reduce the public sector financing needs, there may be an induced wealth effect, leading to an increase in private consumption (the hypothesis being that citizens would expect fewer taxes in the future, so they could save less today and spend more today as well). In addition, the reduction of the government borrowing requirements diminishes the risk premium associated with government debt, contributes to reduce real interest rates, and crowds-in private investment. This would be the best of the worlds.

Interestingly, the possibility of the existence of expansionary fiscal consolidations had already been echoed in the so-called “German perspective” of fiscal consolidations, expressed in 1981 by the German Council of Economic Experts, while two economists, Hellwig and Neumann, also gave it a strong push in a paper published in Economic Policy in 1987. Such view would afterwards have an influence on the fiscal convergence criteria of the Maastricht Treaty, and on the underpinnings of the Stability Pact in Europe, calling for discipline of public accounts as a precondition for stable economic growth. We would be then in a world of “expansionary fiscal consolidations” and non-Keynesian effects. Sorry about that John Maynard, I bet you didn’t thought of this one during your times of Bedford Square, while strolling around Bloomsbury.

Being applied economists keen on gathering data and in trying to validate hypothesis, that’s what they did. Unfortunately, like almost everything in life, you have opposing opinions and results, and you can find your Keynesian effect as well as your non-Keynesian outcome. Funny enough, someone referred to this idea of expansionary fiscal consolidations as something that may occur if two conditions are met: i) the study is done by Italian economists, and ii) the study is about Nordic countries! I would not go that far, but it seems that a pragmatic approach to policy making is in order, cutting a fine balance between Keynes and liberal ideology. The simple, somewhat demagogical and simple query is: do we want to pay taxes to finance minimum subsistence social networks or to bail out private business, as for instance in the financial hiccups of 2008? In the end, and after full consideration, pragmatism should help and prevail when dealing with this “small” economics-market problem of allowing past private profits to become current public losses. Of course, that little thing of non-Keynesian effects and small government seems to have been kind of flushed away… At some point one wonders whether the best policy conclusions and advice are indeed the more solid ones or just the ones that were more convincingly argued in front of the right audience.

Nick Hornby, Stephen Frears, Roddy Doyle, and Alan Parker. In 2006 I read a book called “The Complete Polysyllabic Spree: The Diary of an Occasionally Exasperated But Ever Hopeful Reader”. This was a collection of the columns that Nick Hornby wrote for several years in the Believer, and the idea was the following. Nick would by each month a few books, read them and report about them in the magazine. This appeared to me as a simple, but still quite ingenious idea. Naturally, the coincidence between what he bought, read and reported on, was never 100 per cent, but that is really beside the point. I had great fun reading that collection, since it allowed me to discover some other extraordinary books. I cannot fail her to recall that Nick Hornby also wrote High Fidelity, later passed to the big screen by Stephen Frears, in a most inspired film. In there, it’s all about music, and how the character played in the film by John Cusack simply manages to mess up all his most promising relationships with several women. This brings me almost in direct line, at least in my mind, to The Commitments, the film and the book. The second was written by Roddy Doyle, and the first directed by Alan Parker, with Roddy co-authoring the screenplay. All solid names, and indeed The Commitments is a fabulous film, where music prevails again, and where Jimmy Rabbitte (odd name) pushes along to put his music band together. To all the four guys mentioned in the beginning, thank you for putting this together.