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232 of 262 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Demand Side Economics, November 27, 2008
This review is from: The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (Hardcover)
Depression economics is when conventional economic wisdom no longer applies. In a "normal" recession the Federal Reserve would lower interest rates in order to stimulate consumption and investment. According to Paul Krugman, that remedy is no longer getting any traction. He claims it's time to cast conventional economic wisdom to the wind. The economy is in such a deep hole that he's calling for another $600 billion in federal outlays. This is in addition to the $700 billion already asked for by Treasury Secretary Paulson, and looks very similar to Obama's spending plans for next year.
This is a re-issue of a book written by Krugman in 1999 after multiple economic crises in the decade of the 1990s. Japan had just lost a decade's worth of growth for responding too timidly to the bursting of their stock and real estate bubbles. Krugman also analyzes the various currency crises of that decade: from Britain and Sweden in the early 90s, to Mexico and Argentina in the mid-90s, and finally to Brazil and East Asia in the late 90s. These crises occurred as globalization was doing its work in the currency markets.
In his analysis of Japan's lost decade, he argues that everything must be done to increase aggregate demand. The collapse of demand caused by loss of confidence and fear had severely depressed spending and investment. At that point only government spending can lessen the severity of the recession and perhaps even turn the economy around. In Krugman's view, the lackluster response was the reason it took Japan so long to recover. He believes that one should only worry about deficits and debt when the economy is on the rebound. (This is completely contrary to what Robert Samuelson advises in The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence.)
Krugman claims that the financial crises of 2008 is "functionally similar" to the Great Depression. He does not believe, however, that it will be as severe. We now have the financial tools and institutions - and the hindsight - to make for a softer landing. Nevertheless, this crisis has no end in sight yet. The one big thing that everyone seems to know now is that one does not increase taxes and implement budget cuts during a crisis, as Herbert Hoover did. And which FDR did several years into the Depression.
Another lesson that Krugman derives from the 90's is the need for greater regulation. As one country after another experienced currency problems from investor flight, there was one country that did better than others to weather the storm: that country was Malaysia. It's leader Mahathir Muhammed was of the same mind as Krugman. Managing the capital flows in and out of the country will soften the blows, should foreign investors decide to pull out. The conventional wisdom of the time was that price stability and currency convertibilty were the only things needed, and that the market would take care of the rest. However, in this case, a little more regulation saved them from a crisis.
Depression economics goes against the grain of conventional economic wisdom, and given the current crisis it is coming back into fashion, even among those who preached deregulation and fiscal restraint a decade ago. This theory should be applied sparringly, only in extreme cases - the present crisis probably qualifies. It should not be applied to every minor recession that comes along. The danger of overuse of depression economics is that it can cause a toxic brew of inflation and stagnation - not to mention corruption.
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110 of 124 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Brief and concise, but not very deep, January 5, 2009
This review is from: The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (Hardcover)
This is a slim book (<200 pages with big font and wide line spacing) that covers a lot of material. While I like Paul Krugman's clear, informal writing style and use of analogies to past crises, I didn't find these episodes to be explored as deeply as I would have liked. This book seems more suited to people who are new to macroeconomics. For example, the babysitting coop analogy is a classic, and still one of the clearest, simplest ways to explain the interaction between monetary policy, aggregate demand, and consumer behavior. More data and a few charts would have helped to illustrate the economic and market conditions around the asian and latin american crises, and helped to put the magnitude of these (and the current crisis) in perspective. I liked his discussion of when the severity of some crises seem disproportionate to what fundamental conditions would initially suggest, which sounds a lot like soros' reflexivity (e.g. people perceive a bank to be bad (whether accurate or not), pull their money, cause a run, bank fails, => people create the conditions in which their fears are realized).
Overall, this is a quick easy read, helpful as a concise, clearly written primer on what been going on recently.
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34 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eye-opener, December 16, 2008
This review is from: The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (Hardcover)
Although the title makes the book sound dismal, Krugman's book is actually an enjoyable read. The author goes out of his way to avoid a dry, stuffy tone. Instead, he tells simple stories, like the one about the baby sitting co-op in Washington, which he uses repeatedly throughout the book to explain progressively more complex ideas.
For me, the biggest eye-opener offered by this book is Krugman's explanation of the unregulated shadow banking system that emerged in recent years and has been caving in prior to and during this financial crisis. What are auction-rate securities, and why did the market for them collapse? And why didn't this get more coverage in the media? Krugman explains this, in part by drawing upon an alarming speech made by Timothy Geithner, Obama's nominated Treasury secretary, in June 2008 in which Geithner described a "parallel financial system vulnerable to a classic type of run, but without the protections such as deposit insurance that the banking system has in place to reduce such risks."
This is a great book: readable, informative and timely. I recommend it to anyone who's eager to dig into a deeper examination of the underlying causes of the financial crisis.
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