Terror and Consent & Economics
by rrusczyk, Oct 19, 2008, 7:01 PM
It just occurred to me that the recent economic troubles can be viewed as an example of Bobbitt's thesis in [t]Terror and Consent[/i]--new financial instruments and much more interconnected markets give rise to a need for new tools to evaluate them, new laws to facilitate international coordination to respond to crises (although what in the world is to be done about Iceland?!?!), and a lot more thinking about what government's role is in the markets. It's one thing to allow a stupid person to take a mortgage they can't afford. It's another to allow short-sighted lenders to give so many of these loans that they threaten the entire economy. How to balance these issues is a very difficult problem.
February 2012
January 2012