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“Today is not the 1930s. By acknowledging differences and considering instances where a populist reaction was contained as well as those where populist leaders and movements usurped power, I hope to avoid the worst pitfalls.”
― The Populist Temptation: Economic Grievance and Political Reaction in the Modern Era
― The Populist Temptation: Economic Grievance and Political Reaction in the Modern Era
“The failure to endow Treasury and the Fed with the authority to deal with the insolvency of a nonbank financial institution was the single most important policy failure of the crisis.”
― Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Uses-and Misuses-of History
― Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Uses-and Misuses-of History
“Bryan was now paid by Merrick to stand on a platform of another kind, erected over the water, and speak not of the gold standard but of the Gold Coast.”
― Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Uses-and Misuses-of History
― Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Uses-and Misuses-of History
“Countrywide was an early adopter of information technology to process applications. By the mid-1990s, fully 70 percent of loans passing through its automated underwriting system required no human intervention.”
― Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Uses-and Misuses-of History
― Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Uses-and Misuses-of History
“the Bank of England, chartered in 1694 to raise money for war with France,”
― Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar
― Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar
“THIS IS A book about financial crises. It is about the events that bring them about. It is about why governments and markets respond as they do. And it is about the consequences. It is about the Great Recession of 2008–09 and the Great Depression of 1929–1933, the two great financial crises of our age. That there are parallels between these episodes is well known, not least in policy circles. Many commentators have noted how conventional wisdom about the earlier episode, what is referred to as “the lessons of the Great Depression,” shaped the response to the events of 2008–09.”
― Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Uses-and Misuses-of History
― Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Uses-and Misuses-of History
“Coral Gables was successful from the start.”
― Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Uses-and Misuses-of History
― Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Uses-and Misuses-of History
“Popular accounts portray Europe as either an economic phoenix or a basket case. The phoenix view observes that output per hour worked has risen from barely 50 percent of U.S. levels after World War II and two-thirds of those levels in 1970 to nearly 95 percent today and that labor productivity so measured is actually running above U.S. levels in a substantial number of Western European countries. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, the euro zone has created more new jobs than either the United States or the United Kingdom. Its exports have grown faster than those of the United States. It provides more of its citizens with health insurance, efficient public transportation, and protection from violent crime.
The basket-case view observes that the growth of aggregate output and output per hour have slowed relative to the United States since the mid-1990s. Between 1999, when EMU began, and 2005, euro-zone growth averaged just 1.8 percent, less than two-thirds the 3.1 percent recorded by the United States. Productivity growth has trended downward since the early 1990s, owing to labor-, product-, and capital-market rigidities, inadequate R&D spending, and high tax rates - in contrast to the United States, where productivity growth has been rising. The growth of the working-age population has fallen to zero and is projected to turn significantly negative in coming years. High old-age dependency ratios imply large increases in the share of national income devoted to health care, lower savings rates, potentially heavier fiscal burdens, and an aversion to risk taking. All these are reasons to worry about Europe's competitiveness and economic performance.
One way of reconciling these views is to distinguish the distant from the recent past and the past from the future. Comparing the European economy at the midpoint and the end of the twentieth century, there is no disputing the phoenix view. Economic performance over this half century was a shining success both absolutely and relative to the United States. More recently, however, Europe has tended to lag. Although this does nothing to put the past in a less positive light, it creates doubts about the future.
One way of understanding these changing fortunes is in terms of the transition from extensive to intensive growth. Europe could grow quickly for a quarter century after World War II and continue doing well relative to the United States for some additional years because the institutions it inherited and developed after World War II were well suited for importing technology, maintaining high levels of investment, and transferring large amounts of labor from agriculture to industry. Eventually, however, the scope for further growth on this basis was exhausted. Once the challenge was to develop new technologies, and once growth came to depend more on entrepreneurial initiative than on brute-force capital accumulation, the low rates of R&D spending, high taxes, conservative finance, and emphasis on vocational education delivered by those same institutions became more of a handicap than a spur to growth. Consistent with this view is the fact that Europe's economic difficulties seem to have coincided with the ICT revolution and the opportunities it affords to economies with a comparative advantage in pioneering innovation, as well as with globalization and growing competition from developing countries such as China that are moving into the production of the quality manufacturing goods that have been a traditional European stronghold.
The question is what to do about it. Is it necessary for Europe to remake its institutions along American lines? Or is there still a future for the European model?”
― The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond
The basket-case view observes that the growth of aggregate output and output per hour have slowed relative to the United States since the mid-1990s. Between 1999, when EMU began, and 2005, euro-zone growth averaged just 1.8 percent, less than two-thirds the 3.1 percent recorded by the United States. Productivity growth has trended downward since the early 1990s, owing to labor-, product-, and capital-market rigidities, inadequate R&D spending, and high tax rates - in contrast to the United States, where productivity growth has been rising. The growth of the working-age population has fallen to zero and is projected to turn significantly negative in coming years. High old-age dependency ratios imply large increases in the share of national income devoted to health care, lower savings rates, potentially heavier fiscal burdens, and an aversion to risk taking. All these are reasons to worry about Europe's competitiveness and economic performance.
One way of reconciling these views is to distinguish the distant from the recent past and the past from the future. Comparing the European economy at the midpoint and the end of the twentieth century, there is no disputing the phoenix view. Economic performance over this half century was a shining success both absolutely and relative to the United States. More recently, however, Europe has tended to lag. Although this does nothing to put the past in a less positive light, it creates doubts about the future.
One way of understanding these changing fortunes is in terms of the transition from extensive to intensive growth. Europe could grow quickly for a quarter century after World War II and continue doing well relative to the United States for some additional years because the institutions it inherited and developed after World War II were well suited for importing technology, maintaining high levels of investment, and transferring large amounts of labor from agriculture to industry. Eventually, however, the scope for further growth on this basis was exhausted. Once the challenge was to develop new technologies, and once growth came to depend more on entrepreneurial initiative than on brute-force capital accumulation, the low rates of R&D spending, high taxes, conservative finance, and emphasis on vocational education delivered by those same institutions became more of a handicap than a spur to growth. Consistent with this view is the fact that Europe's economic difficulties seem to have coincided with the ICT revolution and the opportunities it affords to economies with a comparative advantage in pioneering innovation, as well as with globalization and growing competition from developing countries such as China that are moving into the production of the quality manufacturing goods that have been a traditional European stronghold.
The question is what to do about it. Is it necessary for Europe to remake its institutions along American lines? Or is there still a future for the European model?”
― The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond
“American consumers and investors could acquire foreign goods and companies without their government having to worry that the dollars used in their purchases would be presented for conversion into gold. Instead those dollars were hoarded by central banks, for which they were the only significant source of additional international reserves. America was able to run a balance-of-payments deficit “without tears,” in the words of the French economist Jacques Rueff. This ability to purchase foreign goods and companies using resources conjured out of thin air was the exorbitant privilege of which French Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing so vociferously complained.”
― Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System
― Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System
