A version of this list of recommendations also comes out earlier in the day as part of the weekly Policy Progress e-newsletter.

In keeping with this week’s commemoration of Policy Progress reaching the 6 months mark, I thought it might be interesting to plunge into the past for this week’s recommendations. Each of the following were originally included in early editions of my e-newsletter, back before I began republishing those recommendations on the blog. So, for all of the material below, this will be its first appearance on the World-Wide Web!

My first-ever recommendation from 26 February 2010:

Rod Oram – Epoch-defining insight … and the govt missed it

Rod Oram’s Sunday Star-Times column is back, and his first column for 2010 is a particularly good one. For me, it really seems to bring together a number of his recent key themes.

From 12 March 2010:

Matthew Taylor – Prison works, or at least, it can do

Matthew Taylor is an interesting guy. He used to be an advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair, and now he’s the chief executive of the 250-year-old Royal Society for the Arts. His blog isn’t as high-profile or widely-read as some others in Britain, but I frequently find it worthwhile and thought-provoking. This post is likely to have raised hackles within both camps of the law & order debate.

2 April 2010:

Matthew Yglesias – The End of Big Government Liberalism

Yglesias is a US blogger who I read pretty regularly. He blogs professionally, being employed by the Center for American Progress think-tank as part of their Think Progress project. He is one of those annoying guys who, at the age of 28, seems to already be able to often insightful comments on just about any policy area under the sun. Very intimidating! Anyway, this post has a somewhat provocative argument that, while framed in the US context, is intended to apply more universally. It’s probably a good idea to read his follow-up post Fighting About Modes of Delivery, where he clarifies a few of his points, alongside this one.

30 April 2010:

John Quiggin – After the Dead Horses and A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

I’ve been conscious over the last few months that this section was heavy on Brits and Yanks but didn’t have any Australians, and I aim to correct that. John Quiggin is an economist at the University of Queensland and the author of a number of books, including the forthcoming Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk among Us. These posts seem to herald a new focus on progressive renewal that fits well with our Theoretical Foundations theme. I’ve already linked to the earlier of the two (and Matthew Yglesias’s response) in yesterday’s post, but I suspect this is a thread I’ll be coming back to a bit in future. Also, any recommendations of other Australian authors I should follow would be most welcome (I’m looking at people who write stuff of general application rather than commentary on the Australian political scene).

And, finally, 18 June 2010 (appropriate to this week’s column):

Martin Wolf – The grasshoppers and the ants – a modern fable and elucidating the fable

Paul Krugman – The Pain Caucus

Robert Reich – Several factors point to double-dip recession (audio)

Brad DeLong – What’s in the Cards for Our Economy?

The Age (Australia) – ‘Act two’ of crisis begins: Soros

Predicting the economy, especially the world economy, is a tricky business, and not one I’d want to enter into lightly. But it does seem to be that there has been a crystallising of negativity amongst some of the economic writers I most respect, at the same time that the mainstream media (at least here in New Zealand) seems to be saying “okay crisis over, time to move on”. There are some different shades of opinion presented in these US and UK columns and blogs. Robert Reich (Clinton’s former Secretary of Labour) warns a double-dip recession is looming, whereas Brad DeLong feels the more likely scenario is a Japanese-style ‘lost decade’ of low growth. Either way it doesn’t sound good.

We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled round of recommendations next week!

Tags: Brad Delong, George Soros, John Quiggin, Martin Wolf, Matthew Taylor, Matthew Yglesias, Paul Krugman, Robert Reich, Rod Oram

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