A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression - Couverture rigide

Posner, Richard A.

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0674035143 ISBN 13 : 9780674035140

Editeur : Harvard University Press, 2009

Synopsis

The financial and economic crisis that began in 2008 is the most alarming of our lifetime, if only because of the warp-speed at which it is occurring. How could it have happened, especially after all that we've learned from the Great Depression? Why wasn't it anticipated so remedial steps could be taken to avoid or mitigate it? What can be done to interrupt a slide into full-blown depression? Richard Posner presents a concise and non-technical examination of this mother of all financial disasters. Among the facts and causes he identifies are: excess savings flowing in from Asia and the consequent lowering of interest rates by the Federal Reserve Board; the relation between executive compensation, short-term profit goals, and risky lending; the housing bubble fuelled by low interest rates, aggressive mortgage marketing, and loose regulations; the low savings rate of American people; and, the highly leveraged balance sheets of large financial institutions. Although Posner's examples are drawn from recent American experience, the factors precipitating and contributing to the current crisis have international resonance. Posner analyses the two basic remedial approaches to the crisis, which correspond to the two theories of causes of the Great Depression: the monetarist - that the Federal Reserve Board allowed the money supply to shrink, thus causing deflation - and the Keynesian - that the depression was the product of a credit binge in the 1920's, a stock-market crash, and the ensuing downward spiral in economic activity. A heretofore believer in unfettered markets, Posner concludes that the pendulum swung too far and that our financial markets need to be more.

A propos du livre

Revue de presse :

"Before seeking political asylum in free-market Hong Kong, consider reading a new book that critiques what went wrong with capitalism, written in order to save it. Judge Richard Posner's A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression is noteworthy. As a longtime University of Chicago professor and father of the free-market-based law-and-economics movement, Judge Posner makes an unlikely critic of capitalism. But as author of some 40 books and as the most frequently cited federal appeals court jurist, he is also one of our most original and clearheaded thinkers." -- L. Gordon Crovitz, Wall Street Journal, 5th May 2009

" It comes as something of a surprise that Posner, a doyen of the market-oriented law-and-economics movement, should deliver a roundhouse punch to the proposition that markets are self-correcting. It might also seem odd that a federal appellate judge (and University of Chicago law lecturer) would be among the first out of the gate with a comprehensive book on the financial crisis--if, that is, the judge were any other judge. But Posner is the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan's successor as the country's most omnivorous and independent-minded public intellectual. By now, his dozens of books just about fill their own wing in the Library of Congress...Compact and bracingly lucid...By the last page, not a single lazy generalization has survived Posner's merciless scrutiny, not one populist cliche remains standing. A Failure of Capitalism clears away whole forests of cant but leaves readers at a loss as to where to go from here. In other words, it is only a starting point--but an indispensable one."-- Jonathan Rauch, New York Times Book Review, 5th May 2009

"Richard Posner is a phenomenon...He provides a very competent account of the events which led to the current crisis, with an emphasis on the political and ideological context. John Kay, Financial Times, 31st July 2009 --John Kay, Financial Times, 31st July 2009

Présentation de l'éditeur :

Richard Posner looks to past events to explain today's economic situation, and suggests ways in which to prevent such a situation occurring in the future. In so doing he presents a concise and non-technical examination of the mother of all financial disasters.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Harvard University Press
• Date d'édition: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0674035143
• ISBN 13: 9780674035140
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 272