Más sobre la crisis financiera (4)

In this special issue of Cato Unbound, we’ve asked four respected economists, with four very different perspectives, to supply what they think are the missing pieces of the puzzle and to tell us how they all fit together.

Before the meltdown, a few perpetually dour forecasters saw disaster on the horizon, because they always see disaster on the horizon. Yet no one predicted the disaster we got. And the full, true story of what really happened has yet to be told. Of course, this hasn’t kept ideologues from taking the opportunity to malign their enemies and plump for policies they wanted all along. But we cannot place blame until we know what actually happened and why. And we can’t do anything to ensure it won’t happen again until we know what “it” was.

So this month we have brought you Lawrence H. White, the F.A. Hayek Professor of Economic History at the University of Missouri St. Louis; William K. Black, associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One; Casey Mulligan, professor of economics at the University of Chicago; and J. Bradford DeLong, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Each will provide a short essay laying out his best account of what happened...

At the end, your mutual fund statement might not look brighter, but it least it will be a bit less maddeningly mysterious. More importantly, with a clearer picture of what happened, we can start deliberating more intelligently about what does, and does not, need to done.

http://www.cato-unbound.org/issues/what-happened-anatomies-of-the-financial-crisis/

Y del NYRB ver:

What to Do
By Paul Krugman
Volume 55, Number 20 · December 18, 2008
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22151

The Crisis & What to Do About It
By George Soros
Volume 55, Number 19 . December 4, 2008
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22113

Trapped in the New 'You're on Your Own' World
By Robert M. Solow
Volume 55, Number 18 · November 20, 2008
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22080