Krugman had a great and long post addressing the legion of major economists who ignore the obvious realities of depressions. I highly endorse the ideas he represented.
However, in this long post he chose to specifically mention Milton Friedman and Larry Summers as ones who had far more pro-social ideas than Barro and others like him.
That inspired me to write this (but, actually, I'd put the beginning of our downfall back a bit further to the Kennedy Tax Cuts, which had the hands of Hicksian economists all over it--and John K. Galbraith was so right.)
Here here! And quite in line with Keynes himself, who did a great job putting down faith based classical economics in his day. But where there's money, there's always more faith proclaimed. Perhaps you need a new profession with public financing, independent of corporate funded institutions. Didn't said Larry Summers have a lot to do with the destruction of financial regulation started by FDR which had proven useful for decades, only to see unprecedented banking failure and public bailouts result? What does he have to say about this? I hear nothing. I see every weakening of the structure FDR created as having had ill effects, including say Nixon's abandonment of Bretton Woods. I realize these are all now said to have been inevitable, but I doubt both that and the pro-big-finance system which has been created were inevitable, but the result of deliberate choices made by people like and including Larry Summers. And now I see no going back, and THAT is still our biggest problem. I'd call it the neoliberal revolution, which also included the cited Milton Friedman. I suppose it's good that these people had some good ideas. Or was it? A few good ideas may have made the others more acceptable. And a similar thing happens when there is a powerless minority or majority of economists with good ideas. They candy coat the creeping pro wealth bias made inevitable by the others.
However, in this long post he chose to specifically mention Milton Friedman and Larry Summers as ones who had far more pro-social ideas than Barro and others like him.
That inspired me to write this (but, actually, I'd put the beginning of our downfall back a bit further to the Kennedy Tax Cuts, which had the hands of Hicksian economists all over it--and John K. Galbraith was so right.)
Here here! And quite in line with Keynes himself, who did a great job putting down faith based classical economics in his day. But where there's money, there's always more faith proclaimed. Perhaps you need a new profession with public financing, independent of corporate funded institutions. Didn't said Larry Summers have a lot to do with the destruction of financial regulation started by FDR which had proven useful for decades, only to see unprecedented banking failure and public bailouts result? What does he have to say about this? I hear nothing. I see every weakening of the structure FDR created as having had ill effects, including say Nixon's abandonment of Bretton Woods. I realize these are all now said to have been inevitable, but I doubt both that and the pro-big-finance system which has been created were inevitable, but the result of deliberate choices made by people like and including Larry Summers. And now I see no going back, and THAT is still our biggest problem. I'd call it the neoliberal revolution, which also included the cited Milton Friedman. I suppose it's good that these people had some good ideas. Or was it? A few good ideas may have made the others more acceptable. And a similar thing happens when there is a powerless minority or majority of economists with good ideas. They candy coat the creeping pro wealth bias made inevitable by the others.
