Four Fallacies of the Crisis
The current twin crises in finance and the real economy, what Americans call Wall Street and Main Street, and the interminable discussions about financial reform and the prospects for economic recovery, have spawned several fallacies. They need to be addressed and dismissed, lest we absorb the wrong lessons.
NEW YORK – The current twin crises in finance and the real economy, what Americans call Wall Street and Main Street, and the interminable discussions about financial reform and the prospects for economic recovery, have spawned several fallacies that need to be addressed and dismissed.
Fallacy 1: The crisis would produce a “free fall.”
A free fall means just that. But, surely, the world economy, or even the United States or the European Union – to which this dire prediction was applied (by Joseph Stiglitz, for example, who wrote a book entitled Freefall) – has not been plummeting like Newton’s apple. Animated discussions as to whether either or both economies face an L-shaped or a V-shaped recession have given way to the reality of considerable volatility, for both income and financial indicators, around a mild upward trend.
NEW YORK – The current twin crises in finance and the real economy, what Americans call Wall Street and Main Street, and the interminable discussions about financial reform and the prospects for economic recovery, have spawned several fallacies that need to be addressed and dismissed.
Fallacy 1: The crisis would produce a “free fall.”
A free fall means just that. But, surely, the world economy, or even the United States or the European Union – to which this dire prediction was applied (by Joseph Stiglitz, for example, who wrote a book entitled Freefall) – has not been plummeting like Newton’s apple. Animated discussions as to whether either or both economies face an L-shaped or a V-shaped recession have given way to the reality of considerable volatility, for both income and financial indicators, around a mild upward trend.