Thursday, October 25, 2007

Getting Bleak about the Dismal Science

The New York Times ran a book review on Disaster Capital aptly titled Bleakonomics By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ on September 30, 2007. Professor Stiglitz seems to be more explicit in his analysis than was Professor Cowen's post Every Claim is Wrong. Professor Stiglitz's comment

"It's not the conspiracies that wreck the world but the series of wrong turns, failed policies, and little and big unfairnesses that add up. Still, those decisions are guided by larger mind-sets. Market fundamentalists never really appreciated the institutions required to make an economy function well, let alone the broader social fabric that civilizations require to prosper and flourish."

This especially rang true for me but since this weblog is designed to go beyond one's individual paradigms here is a connection to the patriarch of market fundamentalists and his ideas Milton Friedman. What is still to be decided is where I actually fall in the economic continuum.

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