Book review SACK THE ECONOMISTS and disband their departmen

[peterv]

Sack the economists and disband their departments

A no-holds-barred critique of neoliberal economics, and of the institutions that promote it, by Australian author Dr. Geoff Davies

"Mainstream economics has sailed serenely on its way, declaiming, advising, berating, sternly lecturing, deciding, teaching, pontificating. Meanwhile half of Europe and many regions and groups in the United States are in depression, and fascism is making a comeback...

It doesn’t have to be this way. It is possible to create and issue money separately from making “loans”, and then an investment failure wouldn’t reduce the amount of money available. Then a Wall Street crash would mainly affect the investors and gamblers on Wall Street, and Main Street could carry on its routine business without much effect. You won’t hear this said very often. Changing the way money is supplied seems to be a deeply disreputable topic among economists. They avert their eyes and quickly change the subject."

sacktheeconomists.com

[steveb]

I might buy that book just for its title.

I read paper no.3 by the SPERI team last night, 'Power, Politics and The City of London: Before And After The Great Crisis'.

It presents a history of the finance industry in Britain from 1918 to the current day, and identifies distinct phases and changes in attitudes of City elites and of the public perceptions of them.

The article uses some academese in places, however, I found it really interesting. This sense of mystique around finance and the way that has been used to hide the disreputable activities that have always played a part of the City's activities, is perhaps unraveling at present as more and more people are becoming literate in these areas.

Nobody can believe again the narrative of 'the market is best left to regulate itself', and nobody in their right mind should be buying financial instruments or big mortgages without knowing what they are getting into. The conclusion is slightly scary, looking at how Financial Power is now asserting itself more openly:

The post-2008 crisis could be described as the collapse of the attempt (under sovereign
sponsorship) to exercise power through its ‘fourth face’ [the internalisation of market values by the public]
and this discrediting of project and regime plainly left the financial elite with serious problems.
In essence, it has been obliged to fall back on a riskier power strategy which earlier financial elites
have (whether through accident or design) avoided since the onset of democracy in Britain: to work
through the first, ‘decisional’,face of power by confronting issues and opponents openly, often
by involvement in the struggles in the democratic arena.