From The Huffington Post:

AC/DC frontman Brian Johnson is taking on Bono and Bob Geldof for their public displays of charity work.

“When I was a working man I didn’t want to go to a concert for some bastard to talk down to me that I should be thinking of some kid in Africa,” he told Melbourne’s Herald Sun. “I’m sorry mate, do it yourself, spend some of your own money and get it done. It just makes me angry. I become all tyrannical.”

Johnson said that his own band prefers to make their charitable contributions in private.

“Do a charity gig, fair enough, but not on worldwide television,” he said.

[Read more at The Huffington Post]

Not long ago, economist Noreena Hertz lived at the lefty margins of her field. But her (widely ignored) prediction of the credit crisis and her call for a more evolved form of capitalism have suddenly put her at the center of the universe. Noreena Hertz had to seduce Bono...]]> I’ve known Noreena Hertz most of my (and her) life. She’s always been my most mentally able friend. I don’t know what her IQ is, except that it’s off the charts. Her list of achievments at early ages is beyond prodigy. There was a risk, though, of going off the rails, and no doubt some of the more establishment politicians and economists thought that was exactly what she had done when she started writing and speaking about how the underpinnings of modern capitalist economies were unsustainable and inevitably heading towards massive crises.

Well she’s finally getting her dues, as this profile in Fast Company shows:

Not long ago, economist Noreena Hertz lived at the lefty margins of her field. But her (widely ignored) prediction of the credit crisis and her call for a more evolved form of capitalism have suddenly put her at the center of the universe.

Noreena Hertz had to seduce Bono. The Cambridge University economist was writing a book on the developing world, and Bono’s personal saga of getting the U.S. government to cancel more than $400 million of debt was just the pop-culture bridge she needed to move her ideas beyond the wonkish corridors of academia. After all, Hertz’s motive for The Debt Threat — a deep dive into the debt trap that, she argued, would have global consequences for all — was to juice the campaign that had been building slowly in activist ranks. The book itself would be a battle cry (a postcard inside made it easy for U.K. readers to urge the prime minister to cancel billions owed by the world’s poorest countries), and its release was pegged to hit before the 2005 G8 meeting. Hertz sent Bono an email, unsure if it would find him. To her astonishment, it did: “I’m so glad you got in touch,” read the rock star’s reply. “I’m a real fan of your work. Bono.”

Few academics have leaped from the critical fringes to the role of prophet as adroitly as Hertz. Wielding her contrarian message — that markets need to serve the interests of people as much as they serve companies or shareholders — Hertz has been campaigning for the past decade against the mantras of mainstream economists, urging a more ethical form of capitalism. But her message isn’t some yoga-infused spiritual quest. As she explained in her 2001 European best seller, The Silent Takeover, it is about the unsustainability — environmentally, socially, and economically — of laissez-faire capitalism and the idea that markets are stable…

[continues in Fast Company]

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