Purchasing power parity (PPP) is a measure of long-term equilibrium exchange rates based on relative price levels of two countries. The idea originated with the School of Salamanca in the 16th century and was developed in its modern form by Gustav Cassel in 1918.. The concept is founded on the law of one price, the idea that in absence of transaction costs and official barriers to trade, identical goods will have the same price in different markets when the prices are expressed in terms of one currency.

In its "absolute" version, the purchasing power of different currencies is equalized for a given basket of goods. In the "relative" version, the difference in the rate of change in prices at home and abroad—the difference in the inflation rates—is equal to the percentage depreciation or appreciation of the exchange rate.

Deviations from the theory imply differences in purchasing power of a "basket of goods" across countries, which means that for the purposes of many international comparisons, countries' GDPs or other national income statistics need to be "PPP adjusted" and converted into common units. The best-known purchasing power adjustment is the Geary–Khamis dollar (the "international dollar"). The real exchange rate is then equal to the nominal exchange rate, adjusted for differences in price levels. If purchasing power parity held exactly, then the real exchange rate would always equal one. However, in practice the real exchange rates exhibit both short run and long run deviations from this value, for example due to reasons illuminated in the Balassa–Samuelson theorem.

There can be marked differences between purchasing power adjusted incomes and those converted via market exchange rates. For example, the World Bank's ''World Development Indicators 2005'' estimated that in 2003, one Geary-Khamis dollar was equivalent to about 1.8 Chinese yuan by purchasing power parity—considerably different from the nominal exchange rate. This discrepancy has large implications; for instance, when converted via the nominal exchange rates GDP per capita in India is about US$1,704.063 while on a PPP basis it is about US$3,608.196. This means that if calculated at nominal exchange rates, India has the tenth largest economy, while at PPP-adjusted rates, it has the fourth largest economy in the world. At the other extreme, Denmark's nominal GDP per capita is around US$62,100, but its PPP figure is only US$37,304.

PPP measurement

The PPP exchange-rate calculation is controversial because of the difficulties of finding comparable baskets of goods to compare purchasing power across countries.

Estimation of purchasing power parity is complicated by the fact that countries do not simply differ in a uniform price level; rather, the difference in food prices may be greater than the difference in housing prices, while also less than the difference in entertainment prices. People in different countries typically consume different baskets of goods. It is necessary to compare the cost of baskets of goods and services using a price index. This is a difficult task because purchasing patterns and even the goods available to purchase differ across countries. Thus, it is necessary to make adjustments for differences in the quality of goods and services. Additional statistical difficulties arise with multilateral comparisons when (as is usually the case) more than two countries are to be compared.

For example, in 2005 the price of a gallon of gasoline in Saudi Arabia was $0.91 USD, and in Norway the price was $6.27 USD. The significant differences in price wouldn't contribute to accuracy in a PPP analysis, despite all of the variables that contribute to the significant differences in price, such as Saudi Arabia having significant crude oil in its country and Norway not having stated resources. Further comparisons have to be made and utilized as variables in the overall formulation of the PPP.

When PPP comparisons are to be made over some interval of time, proper account needs to be made of inflationary effects.

The Relationship Between PPP and the Law of One Price

Although it may seem as if PPP and the law of one price are the same, there is in fact a difference: the law of one price applies to individual commodities whereas PPP applies to the general price level. If the law of one price is true for all commodities then PPP is also therefore true; however, when discussing the validity of PPP, some argue that the law of one price does not need to be true exactly for PPP to be valid. If the law of one price is not true for a certain commodity, the price levels will not differ enough from the level predicted by PPP.

The purchasing power parity theory states that the exchange rate between one currency and another currency is in equlibirium when their domestic purchasing powers at that rate of exchange are equivalent.

Example: -- Suppose that one USD is currently selling for ten Mexican Pesos (MXN) on the exchange rate market. In the US baseball bats selling for $40 while in Mexico they sell for 150 pesos. Since 1 USD = 10 MXN, then the bat costs 40 USD if we buy it in US but only 15 USD if we buy it in Mexico. Clearly, there's an advantage to buying the bat in Mexico, so consumers are much better off going to Mexico to buy their bats.

Big Mac Index

An example of one measure of law of one price, which underlies purchasing power parity, is the Big Mac Index popularized by ''The Economist'', which looks at the prices of a Big Mac burger in McDonald's restaurants in different countries. By determining whether a currency is undervalued or overvalued, the index should give a guide to the direction in which currencies should move. The Big Mac Index is presumably useful because it is based on a well-known good whose final price, easily tracked in many countries, includes input costs from a wide range of sectors in the local economy, such as agricultural commodities (beef, bread, lettuce, cheese), labor (blue and white collar), advertising, rent and real estate costs, transportation, etc. This index provides a test of the law of one price, but the dollar prices of Big Macs are actually different in different countries. This can be explained by a number of factors: transportation costs and government regulations, product differentiation, and prices of nonfood inputs. Furthermore, in some emerging economies, western fast food represents an expensive niche product price well above the price of traditional staples—i.e. the Big Mac is not a mainstream 'cheap' meal as it is in the West, but a luxury import for the middle classes and foreigners. This relates back to the idea of product differentiation: few substitutes for the Big Mac allows McDonald's to have market power.

Starbucks tall latte index

The Starbucks tall latte index is a variant of the Big Mac Index; it can give information regarding exchange rates similar to the Big Mac Index. The tall latte index was compiled in 2004, during which time both a Big Mac and tall latte cost $2.80. The measures told the same story in most cases with the notable exception of Asia. According to the Big Mac index, the yen was 12% undervalued against the dollar, whereas it was 13% overvalued according to the tall latte index. Furthermore, the Chinese yuan was 56% undervalued based on the Big Mac index but neither significantly undervalued nor overvalued according to the Starbucks index.

The following table, based on data from ''The Economist'''s 2004 calculations, shows the under (-) and over (+) valuation of the local currency according to the Starbucks tall latte index and the Big Mac index.

Country !! Starbucks tall latte index !! McDonald's Big Mac Index
Australia	-4	-17
Britain	+17
Canada	-16
China	-1
Euro area	+33
Hong Kong	+15
Japan	+13
Malaysia	-25
Mexico	-15
New Zealand	-12
Singapore	+2
South Korea	+6
Switzerland	+62
Taiwan	-5
Thailand	-31
Turkey	+6

Measurement Issues

In addition to methodological issues presented by the selection of a basket of goods, PPP estimates can also vary based on the statistical capacity of participating countries. The International Comparison Program, which PPP estimates are based on, require the disaggregation of national accounts into production, expenditure or (in some cases) income, and not all participating countries routinely disaggregate their data into such categories.

Some aspects of PPP comparison are theoretically impossible or unclear. For example, there is no basis for comparison between the Ethiopian laborer who lives on teff with the Thai laborer who lives on rice, because teff is impossible to find in Thailand and vice versa, so the price of rice in Ethiopia or teff in Thailand cannot be determined. As a general rule, the more similar the price structure between countries, the more valid the PPP comparison.

PPP levels will also vary based on the formula used to calculate price matrices. Different possible formulas include GEKS-Fisher, Geary-Khamis, IDB, and the superlative method. Each has advantages and disadvantages.

Linking regions presents another methodological difficulty. In the 2005 ICP round, regions were compared by using a list of some 1,000 identical items for which a price could be found for 18 countries, selected so that at least two countries would be in each region. While this was superior to earlier "bridging" methods, which is not fully take into account differing quality between goods, it may serve to overstate the PPP basis of poorer countries, because the price indexing on which PPP is based will assign to poorer countries the greater weight of goods consumed in greater shares in richer countries.

2005 ICP

The 2005 ICP round resulted in large downward adjustments of PPP (or upward adjustments of price level) for several Asian countries, including China (-40%), India (-36%), Bangladesh (-42%) and the Philippines (-43%). Surjit Bhalla has argued that these adjustments are unrealistic. For example, in the case of China, backward extrapolation of 2005 ICP PPP based on Chinese annual growth rates would yield a 1952 PPP per capita of $153 1985 International dollars, but Pritchett has persuasively argued that $250 1985 dollars is the minimum required to sustain a population, or has ever been observed for more than a short period. Therefore, both the 2005 ICP PPP for China and China's growth rates cannot both be correct. Angus Maddison has calculated somewhat slower growth rates for China than official figures, but even under his calculations, the 1952 PPP per capita comes to only $229.

Angus Deaton and Alan Heston have suggested that the discrepancy can be explained by the fact that the 2005 ICP examined only urban prices, which overstate the national price level for Asian countries, and also the fact that Asian countries adjusted for productivity across noncomparable goods such as government services, whereas non-Asian countries did not make such an adjustment. Each of these two factors, according to him, would lead to an underestimation of GDP by PPP of about 12%.

Need for PPP adjustments to GDP

thumb|right|Gross domestic product (by purchasing power parity) in 2006The exchange rate reflects transaction values for traded goods ''between'' countries in contrast to non-traded goods, that is, goods produced for home-country use. Also, currencies are traded for purposes other than trade in goods and services, ''e.g.'', to buy capital assets whose prices vary more than those of physical goods. Also, different interest rates, speculation, hedging or interventions by central banks can influence the foreign-exchange market.

The PPP method is used as an alternative to correct for possible statistical bias. The Penn World Table is a widely cited source of PPP adjustments, and the so-called Penn effect reflects such a systematic bias in using exchange rates to outputs among countries.

For example, if the value of the Mexican peso falls by half compared to the U.S. dollar, the Mexican Gross Domestic Product measured in dollars will also halve. However, this exchange rate results from international trade and financial markets. It does not necessarily mean that Mexicans are poorer by a half; if incomes and prices measured in pesos stay the same, they will be no worse off assuming that imported goods are not essential to the quality of life of individuals. Measuring income in different countries using PPP exchange rates helps to avoid this problem.

PPP exchange rates are especially useful when official exchange rates are artificially manipulated by governments. Countries with strong government control of the economy sometimes enforce official exchange rates that make their own currency artificially strong. By contrast, the currency's black market exchange rate is artificially weak. In such cases a PPP exchange rate is likely the most realistic basis for economic comparison.

Difficulties

There are a number of reasons why different measures do not perfectly reflect standards of living.

Range and quality of goods

The goods that the currency has the "power" to purchase are a basket of goods of different types: # Local, non-tradable goods and services (like electric power) that are produced and sold domestically. # Tradable goods such as non-perishable commodities that can be sold on the international market (e.g. diamonds). The more a product falls into category 1 the further its price will be from the currency exchange rate. (Moving towards the PPP exchange rate.) Conversely, category 2 products tend to trade close to the currency exchange rate. (For more details of why, see: Penn effect).

More processed and expensive products are likely to be tradable, falling into the second category, and drifting from the PPP exchange rate to the currency exchange rate. Even if the PPP "value" of the Ethiopian currency is three times stronger than the currency exchange rate, it won't buy three times as much of internationally traded goods like steel, cars and microchips, but non-traded goods like housing, services ("haircuts"), and domestically produced crops. The relative price differential between tradables and non-tradables from high-income to low-income countries is a consequence of the Balassa-Samuelson effect, and gives a big cost advantage to labour intensive production of tradable goods in low income countries (like Ethiopia), as against high income countries (like Switzerland). The corporate cost advantage is nothing more sophisticated than access to cheaper workers, but because the pay of those workers goes further in low-income countries than high, the relative pay differentials (inter-country) can be sustained for longer than would be the case otherwise. (This is another way of saying that the wage rate is based on average local productivity, and that this is below the per capita productivity that factories selling tradable goods to international markets can achieve.) An equivalent cost benefit comes from non-traded goods that can be sourced locally (nearer the PPP-exchange rate than the nominal exchange rate in which receipts are paid). These act as a cheaper factor of production than is available to factories in richer countries.

The Bhagwati-Kravis-Lipsey view provides a somewhat different explanation from the Balassa-Samuelson theory. This view states that price levels for nontradables are lower in poorer countries because of differences in endowment of labor and capital, not because of lower levels of productivity. Poor countries have more labor relative to capital, so marginal productivity of labor is greater in rich countries than in poor countries. Nontradables tend to be labor-intensive; therefore, because labor is less expensive in poor countries and is used mostly for nontradables, nontradables are cheaper in poor countries. Wages are high in rich countries, so nontradables are relatively more expensive.

PPP calculations tend to overemphasise the primary sectoral contribution, and underemphasise the industrial and service sectoral contributions to the economy of a nation.

Trade Barriers and Nontradables

The law of one price, the underlying mechanism behind PPP, is weakened by transport costs and governmental trade restrictions, which make it expensive to move goods between markets located in different countries. Transport costs sever the link between exchange rates and the prices of goods implied by the law of one price. As transport costs increase, the larger the range of exchange rate fluctuations. The same is true for official trade restrictions because the customs fees affect importers' profits in the same way as shipping fees. According to Krugman and Obstfeld, "Either type of trade impediment weakens the basis of PPP by allowing the purchasing power of a given currency to differ more widely from country to country." They cite the example that a dollar in London should purchase the same goods as a dollar in Chicago, which is certainly not the case.

Nontradables are primarily services and the output of the construction industry. Nontradables also lead to deviations in PPP because the prices of nontradables are not linked internationally. The prices are determined by domestic supply and demand, and shifts in those curves lead to changes in the market basket of some goods relative to the foreign price of the same basket. If the prices of nontradables rise, the purchasing power of any given currency will fall in that country.

Departures from Free Competition

Linkages between national price levels are also weakened when trade barriers and imperfectly competitive market structures occur together. Pricing to market occurs when a firm sells the same product for different prices in different markets. This is a reflection of differing demand conditions between countries. According to Krugman and Obstfeld, this occurrence of product differentiation and segmented markets results in violations of the law of one price and absolute PPP. Overtime, shifts in market structure and demand will occur, which may invalidate relative PPP.

Differences in Consumption Patterns and Price Level Measurement

Measurement of price levels differ from country to country. Inflation data from different countries are based on different commodity baskets; therefore, exchange rate changes do not offset official measures of inflation differences. Because it makes predictions about price changes rather than price levels, relative PPP is still a useful concept. However, change in the relative prices of basket components can cause relative PPP to fail tests that are based on official price indexes.

PPP and Global Poverty Lines

The global poverty line is a worldwide count of people who live below an international poverty line, referred to as the dollar-a-day line. This line represents an average of the national poverty lines of the world's poorest countries, expressed in international dollars. These national poverty lines are converted to international currency and the global line is converted back to local currency using the PPP exchange rates from the ICP.

The primary problem associated with this calculation lies in the fact that price indexes are weighted averages of prices, and both weights and prices could be incorrect. Individuals living at the poverty line may face prices that are different from the average national prices, but the ICP bases calculations on the average national prices. Furthermore, the expenditure patterns at the poverty line are substantially different from national expenditure patterns, and these expenditure patterns in the National Accounts provide the weights used for the consumption PPPs described by the ICP.

A recent study published in the ''American Economic Journal'' sought to address this issue by using poverty-weighted purchasing power parities, PPPPs or P4s. Household surveys are the distinguishing difference between P4s and P3s. The study found that the substitution of poverty weights for national accounts does not make a large difference to global poverty counts. It did find, however, that the method of calculating the global poverty line does make a large differences. When the global poverty line was calculated using the weighted average of fifty national poverty lines, the global poverty count was significantly lower than when the poverty lines from the fifteen poorest countries were used, which is the method used by the World Bank to calculate the global poverty line. Because the numbers of people in poverty are used as weights, this difference in outcomes based on calculation-method is explained by countries, such as India, with a large number of people living in poverty that are included in the fifty but not in the fifteen poorest. India has a large number of poor people and, by international standards, a low national poverty line. The global poverty line is much lower when India is included than when it is excluded.

The study explains dollars were not used to calculate poverty lines because the structure of advanced economies is different from the structure of economies where the global poor live. For this reason, rupees were more appropriate. The study makes recommendations to others who wish to make international comparisons of living standards for how to measure different indexes for the 2005 calendar year and also how to update these indexes when the results of the 2011 ICP become available. Among these recommendations include methods of converting rupees to dollars (which may be done because many people would want to read this information in terms of dollars).

See also

Big Mac Index

International dollar

Relative Purchasing Power Parity

List of cities by GDP

List of countries by GDP (PPP)

List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita

List of countries by future GDP (PPP) estimates

List of countries by future GDP (PPP) per capita estimates

Measures of national income and output

Penn effect

Karl Gustav Cassel

Geary-Khamis dollar

Notes

External links

Penn World Table

Explanations from the U. of British Columbia (also provides daily updated PPP charts)

OECD Purchasing Power Parity estimates updated annually by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD)

World Bank International Comparison Project provides PPP estimates for a large number of countries

UBS's "Prices and Earnings" Report 2006 Good report on purchasing power containing a Big Mac index as well as for staples such as bread and rice for 71 world cities.

"Understanding PPPs and PPP based national accounts" provides an overview of methodological issues in calculating PPP and in designing the ICP under which the main PPP tables (Maddison, Penn World Tables, and World Bank WDI) are based

Category:Economic indicators Category:Index numbers Category:International economics Category:Gross Domestic Product Category:Article Feedback Pilot

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Purchasing power is the number of goods/services that can be purchased with a unit of currency. For example, if you had taken one dollar to a store in the 1950s, you would have been able to buy a greater number of items than you would today, indicating that you would have had a greater purchasing power in the 1950s. Currency can be either a commodity money, like gold or silver, or fiat currency, or free-floating market-valued currency like US dollars. As Adam Smith noted, having money gives one the ability to "command" others' labor, so purchasing power to some extent is power over other people, to the extent that they are willing to trade their labor or goods for money or currency.

If one's monetary income stays the same, but the price level increases, the purchasing power of that income falls. Inflation does not ''always'' imply falling purchasing power of one's money income since it may rise faster than the price level. A higher real income means a higher purchasing power since real income refers to the income adjusted for inflation.

For a price index, its value in the base year is usually normalized to a value of 100. The purchasing power of a unit of currency, say a dollar, in a given year, expressed in dollars of the base year, is 100/''P'', where ''P'' is the price index in that year. So, by definition the purchasing power of a dollar decreases as the price level rises. The purchasing power in today's money of an amount ''C'' of money, ''t'' years into the future, can be computed with the formula for the present value:

:$C\_t\; =\; C(1\; +\; i)^\{-t\}\backslash ,\; =\; \backslash frac\{C\}\{(1+i)^t\}\; \backslash ,$

where in this case ''i'' is an assumed future annual inflation rate.

See also

Group purchasing organization

Purchasing power parity

Consumer Price Index

Fair trade

Free trade

Group buy

Collective buying power

Constant Purchasing Power Accounting

Oil burden

Inflation

Sustainability

Carrying capacity

Consumption (economics)

Consumerism

External links

MeasuringWorth.com has a with different measures for bringing values in UK Pounds from 1264 to the present and in US Dollars from 1774 up to any year until the present. The Measures of Worth page discusses which would be the most appropriate for different things.

Purchasing Power Calculator by Fiona Maclachlan, The Wolfram Demonstrations Project.

Category:Socioeconomics

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Name	Paul Craig Roberts
Smallimage	Paul craig roberts.jpg
Office	United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy
Term start	1981
Term end	1982
President	Ronald Reagan
Birth date
Birth place	Atlanta, Georgia
Nationality	American
Occupation	economist }}

Paul Craig Roberts (born April 3, 1939) is an American economist and a columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration earning fame as a co-founder of Reaganomics." He is a former editor and columnist for the ''Wall Street Journal, Business Week'', and Scripps Howard News Service. Roberts has been a critic of both Democratic and Republican administrations.

He has written or co-written eight books, contributed chapters to numerous books and has published many articles in journals of scholarship. He has testified before congressional committees on 30 occasions on issues of economic policy. His writings frequently appear on OpEdNews, Prisonplanet.com, Antiwar.com, ''VDARE.com''. LewRockwell.com, ''CounterPunch'', and the American Free Press. Roberts has been featured as a guest on the ''Political Cesspool'' radio show.

Biography

Roberts is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. He was a post-graduate at the University of California, Berkeley and at Merton College, Oxford University. His first scholarly article (Classica et Mediaevalia) was a reformulation of "The Pirenne Thesis."

In ''Alienation and the Soviet Economy'' (1971), Roberts explained the Soviet economy as the outcome of a struggle between inordinate aspirations and a refractory reality. He argued that the Soviet economy was not centrally planned, but that its institutions, such as material supply, reflected the original Marxist aspirations to establish a non-market mode of production. In ''Marx's Theory of Exchange'' (1973), Roberts argued that Marx was an organizational theorist whose materialist conception of history ruled out good will as an effective force for change.

From 1975 to 1978, Roberts served on the congressional staff. As economic counsel to Congressman Jack Kemp he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill (which became the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981) and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy. His influential 1978 article for ''Harper's'', while economic counsel to Senator Orrin Hatch, had ''Wall Street Journal'' editor Robert L. Bartley give him an editorial slot, which he had until 1980. He was a senior fellow in political economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, then part of Georgetown University.

From early 1981 to January 1982 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. President Ronald Reagan and Treasury Secretary Donald Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award for "outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy." Roberts resigned in January 1982 to become the first occupant of the William E. Simon Chair for Economic Policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, then part of Georgetown University. He held this position until 1993. He went on to write ''The Supply-Side Revolution'' (1984), in which he explained the reformulation of macroeconomic theory and policy that he had helped to create.

He was a Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. He was a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

In ''The New Color Line'' (1995), Roberts argued that the Civil Rights Act was subverted by the bureaucrats who applied it and, by being used to create status-based privileges, became a threat to the Fourteenth Amendment in whose name it was passed. In ''The Tyranny of Good Intentions'' (2000), Roberts documented what he saw as the erosion of the Blackstonian legal principles that ensure that law is a shield of the innocent and not a weapon in the hands of government.

Recognition

In 1987 the French government recognized him as "the artisan of a renewal in economic science and policy after half a century of state interventionism" and inducted him into the Legion of Honor on March 20, 1987. The French Minister of Economics and Finance, Edouard Balladur, came from France to present the medal to Roberts at a ceremony at the French Ambassador's residence in Washington, D.C. President Reagan sent OMB Director Jim Miller to the ceremony with a letter of congratulation.

In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism from the American Legislative Exchange Council. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists in the United States.

Views

Criticism of Bush

Roberts opposed the Iraq War and writes frequently on the subject. On May 18, 2005, in response to the publication of the "Downing Street memo," Roberts wrote an article calling for Bush's impeachment for lying to Congress about the case for war.

Roberts was also a critic of a potential Bush administration attack on Iran. In an August 15, 2005 article, he states "Bush...dismisses all facts and assurances and is willing to attack Iran based on nothing but Israel's paranoia."

Although his criticisms of Bush often seem to align him with the political left, Roberts continues to praise Ronald Reagan and to endorse many of Reagan's policies, arguing that "true conservatives" were the "first victims" of the neoconized Bush administration. He has said that supporters of George W. Bush "are brownshirts with the same low intelligence and morals as Hitler's enthusiastic supporters."

Israel

In an article for Counterpunch magazine titled "Pirates of the Mediterranean", Roberts wrote that for 60 years, Israel has replicated "the 17th, 18th, and 19th century theft of American Indian lands by US settlers." Roberts repeated charges that Gaza is "the world largest concentration camp" populated by people who were "driven out of Palestine so that Israel could steal their land." He called the U.S. State Department a "puppet" of the Israelis and the U.S. itself a "puppet state" of the Israelis. He concludes the article by claiming that "there’s no money for California, or for Americans’ health care, or for the several million Americans who have lost their homes and are homeless, because Israel needs it."

Neoconservatives and the South Ossetia War

In an interview on August 27, 2008, on a broadcast of The Alex Jones Show, Roberts stated that he believed that influential neoconservatives affiliated with the Bush administration were leading the United States into a nuclear confrontation with Russia over the situation in Georgia and South Ossetia. Roberts gave the conflict “almost total certainty if John McCain gets in office" and stated that the conflict would be in a timeframe of about two or three years.

September 11, 2001 attacks

Of the 9/11 Commission Report he wrote in 2006, "One would think that if the report could stand analysis, there would not be a taboo against calling attention to the inadequacy of its explanations." (see Criticisms of the 9/11 Commission Report). He has reported what he says are findings by experts that conclude there is a large energy deficit in the official account of the collapse of the three WTC buildings, and says that this deficit remains unexplained.

Roberts comments on the "scientific impossibility" of the official explanation for the events on 9/11 and says those engineers and physicists who accept this theory are wrong. On August 18, 2006, he wrote:

I will begin by stating what we know to be a solid incontrovertible scientific fact. We know that it is strictly impossible for any building, much less steel columned buildings, to “pancake” at free fall speed. Therefore, it is a non-controversial fact that the official explanation of the collapse of the WTC buildings is false... Since the damning incontrovertible fact has not been investigated, speculation and “conspiracy theories” have filled the void.

On the (back) cover of Debunking 9/11 Debunking (2007) he is quoted:

Professor Griffin is the nemesis of the 9/11 cover-up. This new book destroys the credibility of the NIST and Popular Mechanics reports and annihilates his critics.Book Cover Quote

Roberts adding that the so-called neoconservatives intended to use a renewal of the fight against terrorism to rally the American people around the fading Republican Party. "The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists ... are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events," he said. "You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda is not going to do it, it is going to be orchestrated."

US media

"Anyone who depends on print, TV, or right-wing talk radio media is totally misinformed. The Bush administration has achieved a de facto Ministry of Propaganda." "The uniformity of the US media has become much more complete since the days of the cold war. During the 1990s, the US government permitted an unconscionable concentration of print and broadcast media that terminated the independence of the media. Today the US media is owned by 5 giant companies in which pro-Zionist Jews have disproportionate influence. More importantly, the values of the conglomerates reside in the broadcast licenses, which are granted by the government, and the corporations are run by corporate executives—not by journalists—whose eyes are on advertising revenues and the avoidance of controversy that might produce boycotts or upset advertisers and subscribers. Americans who rely on the totally corrupt corporate media have no idea what is happening anywhere on earth, much less at home."

Society

"If I had time to research my writings over the past 30 years, I could find examples of partisan articles in behalf of Republicans and against Democrats. However, political partisanship is not the corpus of my writings. I had a 16-year stint as Business Week's first outside columnist, despite hostility within the magazine and from the editor's New York social set, because the editor regarded me as the most trenchant critic of the George H.W. Bush administration in the business. The White House felt the same way and lobbied to have me removed from the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies... In their hatred of "the rich," the left-wing overlooks that in the 20th century the rich were the class most persecuted by government. The class genocide of the 20th century is the greatest genocide in history."

Outsourcing jobs

Roberts has testified before the US–China Commission and written many articles pointing out that the offshoring of high productivity, high value-added jobs in manufacturing and professional services is dismantling the ladders of upward mobility that made the U.S. an opportunity society. Consequently, he is an opponent of Global Labor Arbitrage.

War on Drugs

Though Roberts worked for the Reagan administration, which implemented a "zero tolerance" and "Just Say No" policy on illegal drugs and increased spending to combat drugs, in 2007, he penned an article criticizing the excess of the War on Drugs which he termed the "militarization of local police".

Republican Party

Roberts is seriously dismayed by what he considers the Republican Party's disregard for the U.S. Constitution. He has even voiced his regret that he ever worked for it, avowing that, had he known what it would become, he would never have contributed to the Reagan Revolution.

American democracy and oligarchy

Roberts has been increasingly critical of what he deems as the lessening of democracy in the U.S.; instead accusing it of being run by oligarchs by stating:

Cessation and resumption of journalistic activism

On March 26, 2010, in a farewell column titled, "Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It," Roberts effectively announced his journalistic retirement. The article, published at Counterpunch.org, begins: "There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest." It proceeds to a bitter chronicle of the demise of American intellectual integrity, particularly that of financial journalists and economists. These have been thoroughly corrupted by monetary inducements to misrepresent and ignore what has been, in effect, the systematic dismantling of the nation's productive life, in the name of globalization. He holds the members of his own journalistic profession largely responsible for abetting relentless outsourcing of American industry, thereby gutting the American middle class and effectively dooming the nation's future. He describes his own ostracism from mainstream media access, the consequence of his relentless and unflinching criticism of the demolition process over the past decade. His column ends, "The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off."

Shortly thereafter, however, he resumed writing articles.

Published works

Books

''Alienation and the Soviet Economy'' (1971, 1990) ISBN 0-8419-1247-5

''Marx's Theory of Exchange, Alienation, and Crisis'' (1973, 1983) ISBN 0-03-069791-3

''The Supply Side Revolution: An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington'' (1984) ISBN 0-674-85620-1

''Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy'' (1990) ISBN 0-932790-80-1

''The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America'' (1997) ISBN 0-19-511176-1

''The New Color Line: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy'' (1995) ISBN 0-89526-423-4

''The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice'' (2008) ISBN 0-7615-2553-X

''How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds'' (2009) ISBN 978-1-84935-007-5

Articles

''CounterPunch''

Creators Syndicate

''LewRockwell.com''

''Antiwar.com''

''VDARE''

''World News Daily Information Clearing House''

References

External links

Column archive (2003-2009) at ''Antiwar.com''

Column archive (2006-2010) at Creators Syndicate

Column archive (1995-present) at ''LewRockwell.com''

Column archive (1995-2009) at ''Vdare.com''

Profile at SourceWatch

Nomination of Paul Craig Roberts To Be an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, President Ronald Reagan, January 30, 1981

;Interviews and articles

Paul Craig Roberts interviewed on Alex Jones Show regarding active nuclear threat within next 2-3 years

Paul Craig Roberts interviewed by Webster Tarpley

Roberts' first article calling for Bush's impeachment

Chuck Harder Interviews Paul Craig Roberts

A Brief Interview with Paul Craig Roberts

Downloadable audio interview with Scott Horton

Category:1939 births Category:American columnists Category:American economists Category:Georgia Institute of Technology alumni Category:Living people Category:Reagan Administration personnel Category:United States Department of the Treasury officials Category:People from Atlanta, Georgia Category:University of Virginia alumni

fr:Paul Craig Roberts ru:Робертс, Пол Крейг

Paul Craig (born 27 September 1951) is currently Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St John's College. Craig is a specialist in Administrative and EU Law.

He was educated at Worcester College, Oxford, where he took his BA, MA and BCL. He stayed at Worcester, and was made a Fellow in 1976. He remained a Fellow until his move to St John's in 1998.

He is the author of a number of legal textbooks the most well known of which (EU Law: Text, Cases and Materials) is about to be published in its 4th edition by Oxford University Press in August 2011.

He currently teaches 5 week courses in Administrative Law and European Union Law at the Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington.

External links

Paul Craig at Oxford Law.

Paul Craig at St John's College.

Notes

Category:1951 births Category:Living people Category:Fellows of Worcester College, Oxford Category:Fellows of St John's College, Oxford Category:Alumni of Worcester College, Oxford

name	Craig Roberts
birth date	January 21, 1991
birth place	Maesycwmmer, Wales, UK
occupation	actor }}

Craig Roberts (born 21 January 1991) is a Welsh actor. He is best known for playing the lead role of Oliver Tate in the coming-of-age comedy-drama film Submarine.

Roberts was born in Maesycwmmer, Wales.

He has appeared in The Story of Tracy Beaker, Young Dracula, Care and Casualty.

Roberts appeared in the pantomime 'Snow White' in Worthing, where he played the evil queen's sidekick 'Drax' in January 2009. In 2008 he worked with Y Touring Theatre Company where he played the part of 'Ryan' in a UK national tour of 'Full Time' which was a play that explores issues of racism, sexism and homophobia in football. He also appeared in the BBC Three television show Being Human and the online spin-off series ''Becoming Human'' as Adam.

Roberts starred in the 2010 film ''Submarine'' which also stars Paddy Considine and Yasmin Paige

Filmography

! Year	! Film	! Role	! Notes
	''Care''	Craig, Pauline's Child	TV movie
	''Little Pudding''		TV movie
		Rio	TV series (2 series 2004-2006)
	''Kiddo''	Jay	TV movie
	Darren Smith/Jordan Philpot	TV series (2 episodes: 2005-2008)
	''Scratching''	Mike	''short''
''Young Dracula''	Robin Branaugh	TV series (27 episodes: 2006-2008)
		Oliver Tate
		Adam	TV series (1 episode: "Adam's Family")
''Becoming Human''	Adam	TV series
	John Reed
	''Red Lights''		''post-production''
''The First Time''	Arthur Goldberg	''pre-production''
''Comes A Bright Day''	Sam Smith	''post-production''

References

External links

Category:1991 births Category:British child actors Category:Welsh actors Category:Living people

sv:Craig Roberts