Economic (and financial crisis) links

[erudito]

About per capita income and its geographical distribution in the Roman Empire.

About militarising foreign aid (pdf).

Saudi supertanker has been seized by Somali pirates, the largest ship ever hijacked. Paper on the economics of piracy (pdf).

Singapore will allow payments to providers of human kidneys and eggs.

Rupert Murdoch is positive about

Comments

[taavi]

And you know what? The case that the CRA caused the current crisis has as much legitimacy as the case that FDR caused a recession to turn into the Great Depression. Little to none.

Different argument

[erudito]

Caused on its own? Clearly not. For being a major factor, particularly when combined with the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the evidence is strong.

FDR clearly did not cause a recession to turn into the Great Depression (in the sense of the scale and length of the contraction), that happened under Hoover. The question whether FDR's policies on balance helped or hindered recovery (and which did what) is more open.

Re: Different argument

[taavi]

It must have been someone else who linked to lots of pieces arguing that Roosevelt turned a recession into the Great Depression by causing investment uncertainty. See here.
As for CRA/Fannie/Freddie, see here. F&F didn't make subprime loans, and their share of the "near-prime" market was small and declining well before the crisis hit.
This is all one big exercise on your part in evading the simple conclusion that unregulated markets can, and do, fuck up big time occasionally.

Re: Different argument

[erudito]

Strangely, I do not always agree with everything that I link to. That FDR's policies, particularly from 1935, suppressed economic recovery is a very arguable case: but the huge contraction before he took office is clearly not his fault

[nix0id]

I think it's right, see: http://nofinancialcrisis.com/content/view/73/1/