Dr. Blanchard drops by to recommend this excellent beginning to Martin Wolf's Financial Times series "The Future of Capitalism." Great global affairs and philosophies hang in the balance!
For those of you short-attention-span kids, here's a shorter video focusing on the narrower issue of what went wrong with the banking system. Toxic mortgages? Credit default swaps? Learn all about 'em in two videos (Part I below, Part II here), eleven minutes total. Who needs TV?
Capitalism has faced challenges like this before. To the extent that my limited historical knowledge allows, the current episode reminds me of the situation that Teddy (not Franklin) Roosevelt faced.
ReplyDeleteI don't claim to know the ideal solution, and I don't claim to know what sort of economic system will evolve from the current economic slump. I get the feeling, however, that "the new economic order" will resemble what we had during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations -- without another Vietnam, I hope!
Back in the '60s, the big fears (as I remember them) were the possibility of global nuclear holocaust, or a Russian military takeover of western Europe. The former would have led to annihilation of a large part of the world's population; the latter to God only knows what (and I hope She keeps it to Herself).
Now, the big fears (as I see them) are a global economic meltdown, or a terrorist attack on an American city with a weapon of mass destruction. The former could lead to socialism; the latter to anarchy and the rise of the Rush Limbaugh clones.