The conclusion to Alarming errors in “Lessons” from the 1930s had a glaring error — now fixed! Perhaps it’s Freudian. It should read: More broadly, the threat to global prosperity is not the use of too much stimulus but too little. If we one day find ourselves in a more protectionist world, it won’t be […]
Monthly Archives: July 2010
What I didn’t mention in today’s OA ‘Brief’
Partly for reasons of space, but more because I am cautions of repetition. My sense is the consumers of these analytical papers remain to be convinced how much relevance prior downturns, the Great Depression, and history in general have for today. That’s OK with me; I used to be of a similar view. Today’s brief is […]
Recession and politics (long, tedious, wonkish and titillating)
Whether you’re from a left or right perspective, you can probably agree that policymaking played some role in the Great Depression. If you’re of a right/libertarian view you might see policymakers as having lacked the mettle to force the economy into a deflated-price equilibrium (or, more accurately, to force the factors of production (pdf) to accept new equilibria) […]
Alarming errors in “lessons” from the 1930s
Angel Gurría explained this morning that protectionism is the real and present danger facing the world economy, citing the 1930s as an object lesson. This view no doubt enjoys considerable support. It is practically a ‘stylised fact’ in our historiography of the Great Depression (was the Smoot-Hawley tariff not in your high school textbook?). It […]
See no evil … (Restructuring is coming)
My house had a problem with pigeons nesting in the chimney. Sometimes we’d come home to find one sitting on the couch. On one such occasion I could hear the bird in the chimney. To keep it from coming into the living room (and having to deal with its mess), I decided the easiest thing […]