Boom and Bust

Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity

Alex J. Pollock

• Publisher: AEI Press
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN:
  9780844743844
• Topic: Économie
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

This eye-opening must-read dismantles the panic and political theater surrounding the 2008 financial crisis, as Alex J. Pollock draws on economic history to show that boom-and-bust cycles are a predictable, even essential, feature of free markets—arguing that the same forces behind financial downturns have also delivered unprecedented gains in health, education, and human prosperity.

While the recent economic crisis was a painful period for many Americans, the panic surrounding the downturn was fueled by an incomplete understanding of economic history. Economic hysteria made for riveting journalism and effective political theater, but the politicians and members of the media who declared that America was in the midst of the greatest financial calamity since the Great Depression were as wrong and misguided as the expansionists of the Roosevelt era. In reality the cyclical nature of market economies is as old as the markets themselves. In a free market system, financial downturns inevitably accompany economic prosperity-but the overall trend is upward progress in living standards and national wealth. While it is helpful to understand what caused the recent crisis, the more important questions to consider are 'What makes the 'boom and bust' cycle so predictable?' and 'What are the ethical responsibilities of the citizens of a free market economy?' In Boom and Bust: Financial Cycles and Human Prosperity, Alex J. Pollock argues that while economic downturns can be frightening and difficult, people living in free market economies enjoy greater health, better access to basic necessities, better education, work less arduous jobs, and have more choices and wider horizons than people at any other point in history. This wonderful reality would not exist in the absence of financial cycles. This book explains why.

Table of contents

• FOREWORD
• CHAPTER I. NOTHING NEW UNDER THE FINANCIAL SUN
• CHAPTER II. THE DISTURBING EXPERIENCE OF WATCHING YOUR FRIENDS GET RICH
• CHAPTER III. ALL TOO HUMAN
• CHAPTER IV. PANIC
• CHAPTER V. BUBBLES AND ECONOMICS: CONFOUNDING ISAAC NEWTON
• CHAPTER VI. DID THEY REALLY BELIEVE HOUSE PRICES COULDN’T GO DOWN?
• CHAPTER VII. A $5 TRILLION GOVERNMENT FAILURE
• CHAPTER VIII. THE YIN AND YANG OF TWO BIG BALANCE SHEETS
• CHAPTER IX. THE GOLDEN AGE OF GOVERNMENT REGULATION?
• CHAPTER X. TAKING RISKS, TAKING RESPONSIBILITY
• CHAPTER XI. CAN YOU REGULATE SYSTEMIC RISK WHEN YOU ARE THE SYSTEMIC RISK?
• ABOUT THE AUTHORS
• ENDNOTES