We're about to enter grim times, but I have hope. Perhaps not of a quick recovery, but rather that finally people are starting to ask the right questions and finally we may get back at questioning how a good life and a good society really is built.
Part of the discussion on how to rebuild our world is environmental, part of it - and right now many start to feel a sense of urgency - is our economic and political systems.
To design a new world, we will have to start thinking again. Therefore, I have compiled a list of what I consider to be key readings on economics. These pieces can each generate hours of discussion. I also think that in order to have a constructive discussion about politics and future, we really need to get these issues understood correctly.
To the list:
Hernado De Soto - Toxic Assets Were Hidden Assets - De Soto is the author of the book The Mystery of Capital and he studies why capitalism succeeds in the western world and fails everywhere else. His research is based on an impressive amount of data and it's hard to dismiss him. In the article linked to, he uses his knowledge of what truly makes capitalism work to clearly describe why in essence capitalism is failing in the west right now.
Steeve Keen - The Roving Cavaliers of Credit - Keen explains credit and banking in depth. It's a long post, but it needs to be since it shatters so many wrong assumptions on how credit is created and the role of banks. In the post, leveraging, de-leveraging (the process the world is in now) is discussed. As an extra plus, Karl Marx is referenced on the subject(!) showing that much of what we experience today is in no way a new experience. Marx described it accurately already in Das Kapital .
Simon Johnson - The Quite Coup - Quoting from The Atlantic:
The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises...
Thomas Palley - it was destined to come a cropper - you got a blog post I wrote on that article on the liked page.
Oh, by the way, it's just four articles right now but I had to post this collection anyway cause I think it's a very important collection.
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