Economist and blogger extraordinaire Brad DeLong takes a whirlwind tour of economic history in his recent talk, Today’s Financial Crisis in a Historical Mirror (weblink).
First comes the tale of the Panic of 1825. As DeLong tells it, this was the first time a central bank (Bank of England) intervened to avert a financial crisis by bailing out an important bank (“Can you say ‘too big to fail?’” DeLong asks.)
After a short detour into economic theory (Irving Fisher’s Quantity Theory of Money) to explain the amount of spending in an economy, DeLong goes on to narrate more recent history: the dotcom bust, the hubris of Alan Greenspan and our current dilemma.
Note to you econ nerds out there: can anyone explain why DeLong thinks that expanding the money supply and getting treasury interest rates “closer to normal levels” is a good idea? To my untutored mind this looks like a prescription for inflation.
Technical note: to download this talk, it helps to have a download utility like DownloadHelper (see How to download streaming audio and video/ Part 1).
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Filed under: 5-star professors, Economics, History, Lectures, University podcast | Tagged: Brad DeLong, financial crisis
