March 2009: Economics (assorted readings)

Post date: Jan 07, 2010 10:49:52 PM

Thanks to Jane for hosting a great discussion of economics! We were joined by Mary's daughter, Katie, in her first year of college majoring in business, rounding out an assortment of ages, interests, and backgrounds of our six-person group on Thursday, March 19, 2009.

Although the reading assignment was a bit scattered, from John Maynard Keynes' Essays in Persuasion which not everyone read to several Foreign Affairs magazine articles, each woman also brought information from other readings, lectures, and experiences. Keynes was the father of spending to cure a recession, so his ideas are relevant today as Obama's government tries to increase infrastructure which will not only improve our roads and alternative transit, but provide jobs to the thousands who have been laid off in the past year.

Next month's book illuminates some of the deregulation that occurred during the 1980's, and from the Powell's review, it sounds pretty entertaining! It will be helpful to understand more about how we got into this mess.

Economics may seem like a dry topic in some ways, but truly it affects us all at some level. We are looking forward to reading something different for our May meeting, and are ready to start choosing a summer theater outing (read the script, see the play) so bring ideas for shows as well!

Tip: Reminder to check your free credit report at www.annualcreditreport.com. Catherine recommends checking one agency every 4 months, as they tend to overlap information. There are 3 agencies so that's once a year free per agency.

For reference, we selected Monica's idea to read a bunch of articles, both historical and current:

• • Selected essays (1991) by John Maynard Keynes called Essays in Persuasion, written in the 20's, 30's and 40's which includes his strongly held views on how to recover by infusion from the world-wide slump of the early 30's. Monica says "He uses colorful informal British expressions to pound his points home, so he is fun to read." A preview of this book, with most of the essays available to read, is available online at Google books

  • Selected items from the current (Jan-Feb) issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. They deal with the consequences of the weakened US economy on its place in the world, vis a vis China, and the rest of the world. These two articles are available online: "The Great Crash, 2008: A Geopolitical Setback for the West" by Roger C. Altman "The Making of a Mess: Who Broke Global Finance, and Who Should Pay for It?" by Harold James Also included in this issue is the article “From Doha to the Next Bretton Woods A New Multilateral Trade Agenda” by Aaditya Mattoo and Arvind Subramanian. See the preview here (first 500 words) and optionally purchase the PDF.

  • Online article "The Crisis & What to Do About It" by George Soros which was recommended by a friend of Ginny Levitt's: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22113. (He has a book on this theme as well (The Crash of 2008 and What it Means: The new Paradigm for Financial Markets), due out in paperback in March.)

  • One more online piece of related material, not a book nor an article, a lecture! "What government must do---the possible policy responses," Robert Reich, Goldman School of Public Policy's one-hour talk will be made available through OLLI. Monica says "He is funny, and at the same time succinctly and cleverly goes over all major parts of the current financial crisis. He is a great teacher, quite charming."