Economic Sense and Nonsense (ebook)

Argumento de Economic Sense and Nonsense (ebook)

Economic Sense and Nonsense comprises a collection of sixty essays written by Anthony de Jasay for his monthly column “Reflections from Europe,” on Liberty Fund’s Library of Economics and Liberty website. The articles span the years 2008 to 2012 and focus on economic issues of topical concern in Europe.

In this collection Jasay continues his explorations of a number of themes that he developed in his earlier articles, such as the importance of property rights, the role of contracts in economic activity, the proper limitations of the state, and the attitude of intellectuals concerning the regulation of the free market. With the outbreak of the economic crisis of mid-2008, Jasay spends considerable\ time discussing its origins, the reactions of governments in both Europe and the United States, and the ensuing euro crisis, thus adding another dimension to his analysis of the economic woes of the industrialized world.

Jasay’s analysis demonstrates that the post–World War II experiment in building welfare states in Europe has reached a crisis point that will require deep and radical changes in thinking both by intellectuals about the nature of free markets and by policy makers about the intended and unintended impact of the regulations they adopt.

Anthony de Jasay is an independent theorist living in France.0Preface, by Anthony de Jasay p. xi

Part 1: To Spend or not to Spend? p. 1

1. To Spend or Not to Spend? p. 3
2. Who Is Afraid of the National Debt? p. 8
3. Two Cheers for Fiscal Austerity: Part 1 p. 13
4. Two Cheers for Fiscal Austerity: Part 2 p. 17
5. What Became of the Liquidity Trap? p. 22
6. The Archbishop and the Accountants p. 25
7. Two Ways, but Where To? p. 29
8. The Platinum Rule p. 34
9. A Fiscal Curb to Tame the State? p. 40
10. Can Sovereign Borrowing Be a Criminal Offense? p. 43

Part 2: The Third Way to Stability?

1. Greed, Need, Risk, and Regulation 49
2. Trudging Down the Third Way 59
3. Open Season on the Capitalist Free- for- All 63
4. Collective Choice at Work 66
5. Instinctive Blunders: Job Protection and Redistribution 70
6. In Fantasyland: The Stressless Economy 74
7. They Wanted a New Order 78

Part 3: The United States of Europe and America

1. The Foolish Quest for Stability 85
2. Europeans Know Better: The Atlantic Cleavage on Financial Reform 89
3. Our Cherished Optimum Currency Area: Its Trials and Tribulations 93
4. Eurozone: It Seemed a Good Idea at the Time 98
5. Stone- Age Banking, Anti- Speculation, and Rescuing the Euro 102
6. Butcher, Brewer, Baker, Banker: All Must Work by the Golden Rule 106
7. Euramerica: A Safety- First Economy 110
8. Come and Get Caught in My Trap 114
9. The Use and Abuse of Taxes and Tax Havens 118
10. Russias Socialist Heritage 122
11. Oil, Gas, and Bluster 127

Part 4: The Best of the Worst
1. The Best of the Worst: What Price Democracy? 137
2. Is Society a Great Big Insurance Company? 142
3. Incomes: Equalizing or Churning? 147
4. The Fat Cats, the Underdogs, and Social Justice 151
5. Equal Poverty, Unequal Affluence, p. 156
6. Topping Up Welfare 160
7. Is Society a Great Big Credit Card? Part 1 164
8. Is Society a Great Big Credit Card? Part 2 168
9. Class War by Judo 171

Part 5: Risks Return

1. Solvency and Liquidity: Some Financial Crises Are More Critical Than Others 179
2. A Trillion- Dollar Catastrophe? 184
3. Bank Debt, Sovereign Debt, and the Dogs That Did Not Bark 188
4. Is s&p a Wmd? 193
5. Ned Ludd, Handloom Weaving, and Franco- German Moral Banking 197
6. Weeding Out the Socially Not Useful 201

Part 6: Cheap Talk as a Weapon of Mass Destruction

1. Cheap Talk, a Weapon of Mass Destruction: Asset Values, Expectations, and the Apocalypse 207
2. We All Prefer Growth to Austerity 211
3. Micro, Macro, and Fantasy Economics 216
4. Negative Productivity
5. Finance in Parrot Talk, Part 1 224
6. Finance in Parrot Talk, Part 2 229
7. Finance in Parrot Talk, Part 3 232
8. Economics Textbooks: Teaching to Despise 236
9. The Bootstrap Theory of the Oil Price 240

Part 7: Better Economic Theory or Not?

1. Thank Heaven for an Inefficient Market: A Tale of Zombies and Speculators p. 245
2. Corruption, Parasitism, and the Abuse of Agency 249
3. The Demise of Gdp Is Premature 253
4. When Is a Change a Good Thing? 257
5. The Price of Everything 261
6. Enough Folly Is Enough 265
7. The Millstones of Egalitarianism, Part 1: Distributionism by Facts of Life 268
8. The Millstones of Egalitarianism, Part 2: Ropemanship, or the Morality of Distributions 274

Index 279