Reddit reviews The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008
We found 5 Reddit comments about The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Economics is a pretty broad subject, is there anything in particular you're interested in? I'll list some sources that I find interesting and that have spurred my interest in economics.
Behavioral Economics
-One of the most engaging books about economics I've read.
-Applying economics to every day life, has a good chapter on how the average crack dealer makes less than minimum wage.
Macroeconomics
(Big picture economics)
Austrian School
(Popularized, not originated, with Friedrich Hayek and generally take a laissez faire approach to the economy)
Keynesian School
(Based on the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, advocates government intervention in the economy to smooth the otherwise turbulent waves of the business cycle)
-Haven't read this one, but Krugman is one of the more famous Keynesians.
Chicago School
Notable Economists:
Microeconomics
(How households / firms make decisions to allocate limited resources. Couple sub categories here, mainly Game Theory and some types of Behavioral Economics)
Casual Books about Economics
-Pretty sure this is available online for free.
-Read this a long time ago before I started seriously pursuing economics. Decent introduction to things like opportunity cost and other simple economic concepts.
Because there is so much information available about economics you might feel a little overwhelmed. That's fine, the important thing is to always keep an open mind and not to dismiss certain theories / information based on a few people's opinions. For example, a lot of people bash on Keyensians these days (and mostly for good reason) but it's important to note that Keyensian economics as its practiced today is vastly different than what John Maynard Keynes had in mind in the early to mid 1900s. Just keep an open mind and form your own opinion.
I'm sure I forgot a ton of stuff so hopefully other people can fill in what I missed.
Return of Depression Economics by Paul Krugman.
Can't believe no one has suggested Krugman's book.
Big Short and Margin Call might be exciting. But this provides a deeper understanding of how crises evolve and how monetary policy affects them.
Bonus: Why Stock Markets Crash. Won't help directly with investing, but offers a fresh perspective on how to think about financial crashes.
This is a paper-thin treatment of the Argentine devaluation and currency crisis. There's no real attempt to explain the causes beyond handwringing about irresponsibility and globalisation. To be sure, the South American currency crisis wave is complex and many things exacerbated it but in Argentina's case I believe the lion's share of the problems can be attributed to it's government's dogged persistence in keeping its currency pegged to the US dollar. This initially led to lots of US investment and goods coming into Argentina cheaply, however when the wider South American crisis hit, Argentina found itself with a massively overvalued currency which made its exports impossibly expensive and meant that imported goods were much cheaper than anything the Argentines could hope to make domestically.
Even the author's vague, bet-hedging statement that "The one thing
everyone agrees on, however, is that there is no easy fix." becomes laughable within a few months of the publication of this article. After a sudden shock right after the devaluation, Argentina experienced a huge surge in growth driven by a boom in exports facilitated by the currency devaluation (GDP growth was 8 or 9% for years from 2002, more than making up the lost output).
There is a cautionary tale in Argentina's crisis, but it's one about the folly of attempting to maintain a fixed exchange rate (in Argentina's case, with the US dollar) and the economic depression that can result. If anybody wants to understand what's driving the Eurozone crisis right now, then you can do a lot worse than looking at Argentina and the practical difficulties it had devaluing its currency without everybody trying to convert it to US dollars first. Krugman's Return of Depression Economics, while updated with a new chapter in 2008, is a 2000 book about the wave of international currency crises in the 1990s which manages to be both detailed and accessible to the non-economist (Krugman-haters can quit their bellyaching too: international currency crises are absolutely a field which Krugman has a major academic specialisation in).
> Sorry but Obama tried Keynesian economics.
So first let me correct you here. To say that Obama tried Keynesian economics is to say you don't understand Keynesian economics. Keynesian economics is not something you can jump on when things are bad and quit when things get good again. Keynesian economics requires a country to maintain it for several economic cycles in order to see its full benefits. Its an economic model that relies on a surplus existing when things get bad so then you can start running a deficit in order to stimulate the economy. Obama attempted to put Keynesian economics to use when his predecessors had not which limits how great the recovery can be.
> It's the reason why under his time in office we had the worst economic recovery since WWII.
Again, this seems like a great talking point if you don't actually understand how economics works. The Obama recovery was practically the best possible scenario. What you're describing is the amount of time it took to return the economy to pre-recession growth rates. When you consider that the recession was in many ways actually worse than the great depression on an economic scale and multiple nobel prize winning economists defined it as a depression, not a recession, it actually becomes a credit to the Obama presidency. Obama actually had one of the best economies and economic policy models of recent presidents. Thats not just me saying that, thats even the right leaning bloomberg..
> You also contradict yourself in your post by first stating that the President doesn't have much influence over the economy and then stating Trump could take a recession and make it a depression.
I believe if you read again what I wrote you'll find what I actually said was:
> People in general believe the President influences the economy much more than they actually do...
The key portion there being "more than they actually do" not that the President does not influence the economy. Saying that the President does not influence the economy at all would be absurd. The President influences the economy in any number of ways but almost all of those take years, in not decades, to show up. People tend to believe the President is in his office every day deciding what the economy will be the next day. The primary way that a President influences the economy in a direct sense is through leadership. The president influences the hearts and minds of people all over the country and the world. In this case if a President projects calm and hopefulness investors panic less. If a President is under investigation for possibly being under the influence of a hostile foreign power and is acting EXACTLY as you would expect a president who is under the influence of a hostile foreign power to act while also being incapable of holding a thought long enough to calm someone down the markets are going to be more volatile as people are more scared and paniced as the future becomes harder to predict.