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Monday, September 20, 2010

Analyzing the Crisis of 2008-20??

Books dealing with the 2008-20?? crisis are now sprouting on store shelves. Two opposing schools of thought are exemplified by folks such as Paul Krugman, a Keynesian, on the one hand and Raghuram G. Rajan of the Chicago school, on the other. Paul Krugman's views are expressed in a book entitled The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (review here) while Raghuram G. Rajan presents his analysis in a book entitled Fault Lines (review here).
I will not mince words. I see Paul Krugman as an apologist for current and past policies that blame everything and everyone else for the crisis, while advocating more of the same but in ever larger doses as a solution. Raghuram G. Rajan, on the other hand, belongs to a group trying to analyze past and present policies to see what went wrong and how to avoid the same mistakes today and in the future. I particularly like his article in the The Journal of the American Enterprise Institute critiquing Paul Krugman's head-in-the-sand views.