“The key lesson of the bubble is that unregulated competition for mortgage credit risk will inevitably result in a deterioration of lending standards and an unsustainable bubble. Competition in the housing finance market is desirable—but only along the right dimensions. We should encourage competition in terms of operational efficiency and consumer-friendly innovation, not a race to the bottom for credit risk.”
“We have an unprecedented opportunity to rein in capitalism’s excesses and reshape our democracy. Here’s how experts from MIT, Harvard, and more would tackle the biggest problems.”
“The collapse of the stock markets in the developed world in March has quickly reversed, leaving many to argue that the disconnect between financial markets and the real economy will be short-lived and that a market correction is inevitable. In the latest installment of CoronaNomics, PS Contributors Jim O’Neill and Willem Buiter discuss with Ben Chu from The Independent and Lizzy Burden from The Telegraph what’s in store for the global economy and financial markets and how to reconcile the disconnect.”
In After Hours Harvard professors discuss news at the crossroads of business and culture. In this episode Felix welcomes HBS professor Rebecca Henderson, who argues climate change demands a reimagination of capitalism. She is the author of Reimagining Capitalism in a World Onfire, which appears this month with Public Affairs Books.
““Racial capitalism” is a brutal socio-economic system. Regionally across the small islands nations and countries of the Caribbean the scars of this system are everywhere. […] The introduction and spread of deadly disease within the region via tourism and globalization can be read as one aspect of how racialised global capitalism facilitates the spread of Covid-19 from elsewhere to a region historically exploited and underdeveloped, and how different nations and populations will experience the social and economic fallout from Covid-19 in different and uneven ways.”
The idea that the people have a right to shape political decisions through democratic means is widely accepted. The same cannot be said of the decisions that impact on our everyday economic life in the workplace and beyond. Andrew Cumbers shows in The Case for Economic Democracy why this is wrong, and why, in the context of the rising tide of populism and the perceived crisis of liberal democracy, economic democracy’s time has come.
“As the coronavirus pandemic grows, it brings a secondary, economic disaster—unemployment, small business closings, local government budget shortfalls. Given the way our economy is structured, widespread job losses and plummeting consumer demand trigger a whole lot of suffering. But, as philosopher Barbara Muraca explained in 2013, the activist and scholarly movement known as degrowth is building a vision of a society where economies would get smaller by design—and people would be better off for it.”
Interested in this topic? Visit the Moral Markets book shelf on economic (de)growth
More time to read than usual? Verso Books, a lefist publisher of various books on rethinking the future capitalism has a 40% discount on all books and 80% on ebooks until April 2nd. Five ebooks are even for free, including The Case for the Green New Deal (2019) and Four Futures; Life After Capitalism (2016), which can also be found on the Moral Markets bookshelf.
“The outbreak has instantly exposed the stark class divide in American healthcare. Those with good health plans who can also work or teach from home are comfortably isolated provided they follow prudent safeguards. Public employees and other groups of unionized workers with decent coverage will have to make difficult choices between income and protection.”
In Big Business, economics professor Tyler Cowen puts forth an impassioned defense of corporations and their essential role in a balanced, productive, and progressive society. He dismantles common misconceptions and untangles conflicting intuitions.
