The Economists' Hour
How the False Prophets of Free Markets Fractured Our Society
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- 59,00 kr
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- 59,00 kr
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‘A well-reported and researched history of the ways in which plucky economists helped rewrite policy in America and Europe and across emerging markets.’ The Economist
‘A highly readable, exhilaratingly detailed biographical account.’ Sunday Telegraph
As the post-World War II economic boom began to falter in the late 1960s, a new breed of economists gained influence and power. Over time, their ideas reshaped the modern world, curbing governments, unleashing corporations and hastening globalization.
Their fundamental belief? That governments should stop trying to manage the economy.
Their guiding principle? That markets would deliver steady growth and broad prosperity.
But the economists’ hour failed to deliver on its premise. The single-minded embrace of markets has come at the expense of economic equality, the health of liberal democracy and of future generations. Across the world, from both right and left, the assumptions of the once-dominant school of free-market economic thought are being challenged, as we count the costs as well as the gains of its influence.
In The Economists’ Hour, acclaimed New York Times writer Binyamin Appelbaum provides both a reckoning with the past and a call for a different future.
‘A reminder of the power of ideas to shape the course of history.’ New Yorker
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New York Times correspondent Appelbaum, who won a George Polk Award for his subprime lending reporting, intelligently chronicles the unprecedented influence of economists on public policy during what he dubs "the economists' hour," roughly from 1969 to 2008. He recounts how economists in the U.S. rose from laboring in obscurity in Quonset huts on the National Mall to occupying such lofty roles as secretary of the treasury and chair of the Federal Reserve. Appelbaum is sharply skeptical of the reputed alchemical powers of economists to engineer prosperity, particularly those (Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan) whose blind adherence to free market principles, he argues, fostered the Great Recession and significant income inequality. He notes that countries that consulted economic theory, but then accorded management of the economy to engineers (as in Taiwan) or the state (as with China) have performed better economically than the U.S. with its policy of minimal government intervention in markets. He also examines the deleterious effects of the unfettered free market philosophy upon health and safety regulations, regulation of industries, and antitrust litigation, concluding that blind reliance on free markets has led to an ossifying plutocratic minority. This thoroughly researched, comprehensive, and critical account of the economic philosophies that have reigned for the past half century powerfully indicts them.
