Monday, November 8, 2010

Essays on the Great Depression by Ben S Bernanke - For Serious "Depression Buffs" Only

This is such a pertinent read right now. If you care at all about the value of the greenback, if you care at all about the state of affairs, from microeconomic to macroeconomic, and everything in between, you’ll want to not only glance and sift through this title; take it along with you to the beach. Sit on it a while; the author certainly has, who’s none other than the current Fed Chairman. He curated and cultivated this relatively short list of essays over the past 20 years—20, before publishing circa 1999. It just frames everything that we’re going through, in terms of the recession, in terms of the housing crash in the U.S., in terms of the collapses of various nation-states in the E.U., in such a clearer light. You read the book, and you sometimes forget, that he’s referring to the Asian Contagion most of the time, (especially in that intro, with his side notes), but it just makes so much sense to be talking about the global recession in those terms as well. This is for the serious “depression buffs” out there, as the author admittedly is. He’s not at all a good writer; he writes like he talks, when he testifies. He says stuff like “very substantially,” which is just kind of endearing, if not a little disappointing, considering his stature then, as an economist, but particularly now. You definitely come away with a sense of confidence and security about the man at the helm, thankful that he’d been this depression buff, instead of a wacky “wizard” (Alan Greenspan).

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