Why am I passionate about this?
How did I – as a scholar of German literature – turn to economic topics? That had a certain inevitability. When I left for Paris in the early nineties, reading traces of anthropological knowledge in literature and aesthetics of the 18th century, I came across economic ideas on almost every page, in natural history, in medicine, in philosophy, in encyclopedias, in the theories of signs and in the teachings of beauty. There was circulation, communication, flows of exchange all over the place, and the Robinsons were the model. This reinforced the impression that the human being was engaged in aligning himself with homo oeconomicus. The question of modern economics has therefore become unavoidable for me.
Joseph's book list on the political power of contemporary finance
Why did Joseph love this book?
Minsky’s thesis on financial instability is a brilliant intellectual blow against the liberal legend concerning the balancing powers of (financial) markets.
It suggests that manifest crises and breakdowns are not simply caused by external tremors, by fiscal or political coups de théâtre; rather, they are brought about by the parameters and endogenous movements of the financial economy itself.
Unlike cybernetic and self-regulating systems, the financial market is inclined to be spooked by its own tranquillity and destabilized by its own stability. The very efficiency of its functioning turns out to be utterly dysfunctional.
2 authors picked Stabilizing an Unstable Economy as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
"Mr. Minsky long argued markets were crisis prone. His 'moment' has arrived." -The Wall Street Journal
In his seminal work, Minsky presents his groundbreaking financial theory of investment, one that is startlingly relevant today. He explains why the American economy has experienced periods of debilitating inflation, rising unemployment, and marked slowdowns-and why the economy is now undergoing a credit crisis that he foresaw. Stabilizing an Unstable Economy covers:
The natural inclination of complex, capitalist economies toward instability Booms and busts as unavoidable results of high-risk lending practices "Speculative finance" and its effect on investment and asset prices Government's role in…- Coming soon!