Download WRONG: Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn from Them AudioBook Free
In recent years, the globe has been rocked by major financial crises, especially the disastrous collapse of Lehman Brothers, the most significant bankruptcy in American history, which prompted the breathtakingly detrimental sub-prime catastrophe. What sparks these huge financial calamities? Why do our financial policy makers neglect to protect us from such upheavals? In Wrong, economist Richard Grossman addresses such questions, shining a light on the indegent thinking behind nine of the worst economic policy mistakes of the past 200 years, missteps whose results ranged from appalling to tragic. Grossman explains to the storyline behind each misconceived financial move, explaining why the insurance policy was used, how it was executed, and its short- and long-term effects. In each circumstance, he implies that the main culprits were insurance policy makers who were guided by ideology rather than economics. For example, Wrong looks at how America's unfounded fear of a centralized monetary authority caused these to reject two central lenders, condemning the country to wave after wave of financial panics. He describes how Britain's blind determination to free market segments, rather than to supporting the starving in Ireland, led to one of the 19th century's worst humanitarian tragedies - the Irish famine. And he shows how Britain's reestablishment of the precious metal standard after World War I, fuelled mainly by a desire to recapture its pre-war dominance, helped to carefully turn what would often have been a normal recession into the Great Unhappiness. Grossman also explores the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, Japan's lost decade of the 1990s, the American subprime turmoil, and today's European sovereign debts crisis. Economic insurance policy should be predicated on cold, hard financial analysis, Grossman concludes, not by using an unquestioning determination to a specific ideology. Wrong shows what happens when this reasonable advice is ignored.
