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The Return Of Depression Economics And The Crisis Of 2008 (2008)

by Paul Krugman(Favorite Author)

3.8 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0393071014 (ISBN13: 9780393071016)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

review 1: This book is brilliantly accessible. He first chastises economists for not expaining things clearly. Then, he uses the simple example of a babysitting coop to explain the business cycle. Without using the term Demurage, he cites the Keynesian and Gesellian idea of forced spending into the economy which increases circulation and ends the deflation cycle. But he expains it without using any of these terms. Brilliant. Too bad phd students are not allowed to do this in a thesis (Yes I saw one such thesis, but I think it was sociology, not economics, nor economic social policy, which was my area.) I recall reading this in 2006 for my thesis, and wondering how my office-mate, an economics phd student, could know almost nothing about the history of economics. Now I know,... more sadly, that most economists seem to ignore history. Or brush it aside. Other authors mention a roughly 19 year boom-bust world economic cycle, but the cycle is there, and is not stable. Yet the warnings of Keynes and even Greenspan were ignored. The Asian crises had all the hallmarks of the Great Depression, and international reaction follows, it seems, the errors of the Depression. He warns "As in the Victorian era, capitalism is secure not onlybecause of its successes-which, as we will see in a moment, havebeen very real-but because nobody has a plausible alternative.This situation will not last forever. Surely there will be otherideologies, other dreams; and they will emerge sooner rather thanlater if the current economic crisis persists and deepens." Some of those dreams will be utopian, and viable if we will it, but other ideologies may not be so utopian. Let's not "learn all the wrong lessons" again.Shira of The MEOW CC Blog,MEOW Date: 9 September, 12014 H.E. (Holocene/Human Era)
review 2: I like reading economic books several years after the fact, so I can see whose predictions were right and whose wrong. Paul Krugman get some small things wrong, but he seems to be right much more than most economists, when viewed with 20/20 hindsight. I loved that this book gave a clear explanation of liquidity traps and monetary supply and such things that normal people (even me) can understand, using the example of the congressional baby sitting co-op. less

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