On the financial crisis & economic policy - Introduction
Author(s)
Solow, Robert M.; Friedman, Benjamin H.
DownloadFriedman-2010-On the financial cri.pdf (383.3Kb)
PUBLISHER_POLICY
Publisher Policy
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Terms of use
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The financial meltdown of 2007 to 2009
was surely a great spectacle. Mighty
names toppled like that statue of Saddam
Hussein. Lehman Brothers, with a history
spanning a century-and-a-half, just disappeared.
Bear Stearns and even Merrill
Lynch–the same Merrill Lynch that had
taught generations of small investors to
be “bullish on America”–were sold off
at discounts suitable for used furniture.
AIG was rescued in the nick of time, but
only with $182 billion of U.S. government
assistance. Trillions of dollars of investors’
wealth simply evaporated. One
could think, “Oh, well, easy come, easy
go.” But still, trillions of dollars? It was a
spectacle all right, but why did it really
matter to the rest of us, who count ourselves
merely as citizens of the republic?
Date issued
2010-10Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of EconomicsJournal
Daedalus
Publisher
MIT Press
Citation
Friedman, Benjamin M., and Robert M. Solow. “On the financial crisis & economic policy - Introduction.” Daedalus 139.4 (2010): 5-8. © 2010 American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Version: Final published version
ISSN
0011-5266
1548-6192