Interviewing the Crisis (plus Niall Ferguson’s irrelevance)
A great artsy initiative is tracking repercussions of the crisis in creative industries
http://www.artsblog.it/post/2749/trilogy-of-crisis-intervistando-la-crisi-unintroduzione
We, great recessionists encourage you to follow and participate in the project.
On a fairly unrelated issue, we wanna lambast that jerk of Niall Ferguson, the official historian of global finance, who, after having rescued the memory of the British Empire (while ripping off H&N’s newfound fame) from disrepute (ask Indians and Pakistanis, or Israelis and Palesitinians about the virtues of their former colonial masters) writes on financial collapse on the Financial Times as if he had predicted it all (he didn’t, of course). OK, Ferguson now thinks we’re in a Great Repression (that’s right, it ain’t a typo), which is not Sarkozy’s latest plan for policing riotous banlieues, but rather the coming home to roost of 20 and more years of financial recklessness (fine, but where were you Niall when the party was on?).
He’s also saying that a pragmatic mix of monetarist and keynesian measures is being implemented to drag us out of the slump. Trying to save Friedman’s failed legacy on the sneak? Any macro 101 student knows that if you’re in depression you need 100% Keynes in both fiscal and monetary policy. But wait, we learn from him that Bernanke is a monetarist while Paulson is a keynesian. WOT?? If money-thrower Bob is a monetarist, what about the french old man in Frankfurt? The Fed wants inflation at any cost (you hear, Trichet?). Not even Santa can do better, moneywise. But it’s true that Bernanke like all US macroeconomists revered Friedman to the point of dogma. As Krugman notes, Lucas and other Chicago boys were boasting that the Depression was no effective demand crisis which had a keynesian solution, but a monetary fuckup. After Friedman, that would be unrepeatable. Well, Keynes was right all along. And, if you’re keynesian, it means you’re fiscal before anything else and wanna go on a deficit spending splurge. Now, everybody knows Paulson is a goldenparachuted investment banker who wanted to spend money on his pals on Wall Street and nobody else. Obama and Summers might go keynesian all the way, we’ll see. But the bushists have just done a fucking mess. TARP has proved as corrupt as ineffective and the economy is dropping like a stone. Some pragmatism… The once overmighty financial markets and their apologists are just no longer relevant.