Somebody in Charge A Solution to Recessions [Paperback]

This book asks a fundamental question, that is, whether somebody in charge could have prevented or solved the problem leading up to our current financial crisis. This book explores and answers that question from a scholarly and academic economic viewpoint.Introduction: Adult Supervision PART I: THE?LIMITS OF AUTHORITY Social Complexity The Impossibility of Planning The Inconvenient Individual The Tribe and the Great Society PART II: ARE RECESSIONS POSSIBLE? ? Business Cycles and Crashes An Economist in Wonderland Classical Economics Recessions Happen? PART III: MACROECONOMIC CONTROVERSIES The Old Idea of Underconsumption Keynes's Ideas: A Brief Summary Price Adjustments Multiplying Bread and Fish Meaningless Aggregates Information and Coordination Government Activism More Recent Theories of the Business Cycle PART IV: THE MIXED ECONOMY A Failure of Capitalism?? Government Revenues and Expenditures Regulation and Control The Welfare State Businessmen as Domestic Animals PART V: FINANCIAL DEREGULATION: AN URBAN LEGEND Lax Regulation Deregulation U.S. Banks in a World Perspective Necessary Regulation?? PART VI: THE CRIME SCENE: ENVY OF THE WORLD Residential Home Market Driven by Government A Half-nationalized Residential Mortgage Market Securitization Subsidization of Risk The Collapse of the House of Cards Larger Consequences PART VII: MONETARY MEDDLING The Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle Some Doubts on the Austrian Interpretation of the Crisis Monetary Policy Played a Role On Balance: A Contributing Factor PART VIII: STATE ANIMAL SPIRITS State Greed Faddish Behavior and State Bubbles Regulatory failure Collectivism Power and Hubris Systemic risk Conclusion: Something Must Be Done Bibliography Name Index Topics Index Charts

Lemieux argues that the government's clumsy and ill-considered attempts to control market outcomes have often been at the heart of economic instability, and that the recent subprime crisis is a telling example of the costs of riskylƒœ