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Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea
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Review
"One of the especially good things in Mark Blyth's Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea is the way he traces the rise and fall of the idea of 'expansionary austerity', the proposition that cutting spending would actually lead to higher output. As Blyth documents, this idea 'spread like wildfire.'" --Paul Krugman, The New York Review of Books "An important polemic... valid and compelling."--Lawrence Summers, Financial Times "Essential reading... The economy is much too important to leave to economists. We need to understand how ideas shape it, and Blyth's new book provides an excellent starting point."--Washington Monthly "Splendid new book." --Martin Wolf, Financial Times"Austerity is an economic policy strategy, but is also an ideology and an approach to economic management freighted with politics. In this book Mark Blyth uncovers these successive strata. In doing so he wields his spade in a way that shows no patience for fools and foolishness." --Barry Eichengreen, George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science University of California, Berkeley "Of all the zombie ideas that have been reanimated in the wake of the global financial crisis, austerity is the most dangerous. Mark Blyth shows how austerity created the disasters of the 1930s, and contributed to the descent of the world into global war. He shows how European austerity policies have prevented any recovery from the crisis of 2009, while rescuing and protecting the banks and financial institutions that created the crisis. An essential guide for anyone who wants to understand the current depression." --John Quiggin, author of Zombie Economics "Most fascinating is the author's discussion of the historical underpinnings of austerity, first formulated by Enlightenment thinkers Locke, Hume and Adam Smith, around the (good) idea of parsimony and the (bad) idea of debt. Ultimately, writes Blyth, austerity is a 'zombie economic idea because it has been disproven time and again, but it just keeps coming.' A clear explanation of a complicated, and severely flawed, idea." --Kirkus Reviews "Informed, passionate." --Dissent Magazine"Mark Blyth's fascinating analysis guides the reader through 'the historical ideology which has classified debt as problematic.' In doing so he outlines the relevance of century-old debates between the advocates and opponents of laissez faire, and explains why, after a brief reemergence in 2008-09, and despite the lack of evidence supporting austerity, the world turned its back on Keynesian policies." --Robert Skidelsky, author of Keynes: The Return of the Master "Among all the calamities spawned by the global financial crisis, none was as easily avoidable as the idea that austerity policies were the only way out. In this feisty book, noted political scientist Mark Blyth covers new territory by recounting the intellectual history of this failed idea and how it came to exert a hold on the imagination of economists and politicians. It is an indication of the sorry state of macroeconomics that it takes a political scientist to expose so thoroughly one of the economics profession's most dangerous delusions." --Dani Rodrik, Rafiq Hariri Professor of International Political Economy, The John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University "Blyth makes a compelling case that governments should give pause before embarking on a course of austerity. He approaches the subject with a seriousness that is to be welcomed and applauded." --Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon, University of Arkansas, International Social Science Review
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About the Author
Mark Blyth is Professor of International Political Economy at Brown University. He is the author of Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century.
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Product details
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press; Reprint edition (January 2, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0199389446
ISBN-13: 978-0199389445
Product Dimensions:
8.4 x 1.1 x 5.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.2 out of 5 stars
115 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#152,122 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea is an overview of the history of austerity economic policy, an explanation of how austerity as a policy works (or, more accurately, does not work), and an examination of austerity policies as they have been implemented in the real world. As one can surmise from the book's subtitle, Blyth does not hold a rosy view of austerity as a policy but, though his disdain is clear, he still treats the idea with fairness throughout the book.What I most appreciated about Austerity was the way that most chapters (with the exception of the introduction and conclusion) was set up a bit like a textbook. The intent of the internal sections was to convey information and examine the scholarly research regarding austerity economic theory in light of criticism from other economists and - mainly - actual economies. However, Blyth took pains to make this information as accessible as possible to readers with little/no finance background by clearly explaining what measures meant and why things were important in the context of their real-world implications. I probably could have gotten more out of the analysis if I came to the book with a background in finance or math, but Austerity was understandable and highly educational nonetheless.
I really enjoyed this book; it summarized the debates about austerity for me and taught me a lot of things I didn't know about European austerity. I was aware of Keynes' The Economic Consequences of the Peace after WW I, for example, but not aware of how much the French at that time counted on reparations from Germany to heal their war-torn economy, while also trying to return to the gold standard. This led to French austerity, including cuts to their military while the Germans were inflating away their debts and rearming.I only gave it 4 stars because some of the writing is awkward; it needs a better proofreader. Many sentences involve mixed metaphors and there seem to be a few that say the opposite of what the author really means to say. At several points the author talks about how austerity is good for us all, when it is plain from the wider context that this is not what he thinks at all. Phrases like this are just confusing while trying to digest technical information about banking and economics. The author should have put these things into quotes or used some other rhetorical device. Austerity is not good for us.I totally agree that you cannot run a democracy on the gold standard for very long.If a 2nd edition comes out that cleans up some of the murky writing, I would give it 5 stars.
I found this book the same as many other people did - first I happened upon a video of the author talking against Austerity (quite compellingly) and then looked him up and found there was a book. I think along with Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber, it is the most important recent book on economics that I've read. A brilliant book, all told, and a must read for anyone that is following the macroeconomic discourse and thinks something about it is just off.While I started reading this book back in May (5 months ago), shortly after I was impressed by the video, I struggled to make progress in reading it. It wasn't until I girded myself and read it without distraction in the last few days that I got anywhere with it. This is not because it's a bad book, or that it's badly written, but simply because in the roughly 300 pages it packs more important, conceptual information than your average text-book. I often paused and went off to read some of the references, or just sat and thought through some of the logic. That this proved rewarding makes it worthwhile.What I found refreshing was that this is more than just a book that talks in terms that are in vogue in the public discourse. Instead, it takes a holistic approach.The author starts in the first three chapters by recapping the Financial Crisis in the US and the Eurozone Crisis, and exposing the 'moral play' behind the public discourse about it as patently false.To wit, both were purely crises within the Financial Sectors, but with banks having become systemically important, when the mortgage/ asset bubbles burst, governments were left holding the bills. The author points out quite acidly that what is today being called a "Sovereign Debt" crisis on both sides of the Atlantic actually wasn't - and critically, still isn't that. It is a crisis whose descriptions suffer from a fallacy of composition - in a nutshell, the people that made the mess are not the ones cleaning it up; we are all instead berating governments (who didn't make it) to clean it up, not realizing that we will be the ones settling the bill!The next three chapters summarize the history of Austerity, beginning with the times when nation state concept was itself young, and the "State" meant actually the "King", and had to be tied down and was not to be trusted with spending public money. The author starts by talking about the work of John Locke, David Hume, and Adam Smith - the dawn of the idea of private property and capitalism, and traces a line from them to both John Maynard Keynes, and Joseph Schumpeter, as well as the Austrian school exemplified by Hayek and Von Mises. In so doing, he exposes the intellectual roots of not only the Angela Merkels and Paul Ryans of the world, but also of the IMF's "Washington Consensus" that has driven liberalization in India (credited incorrectly to Manmohan Singh). Interestingly, he also shows why he thought Austerity was "Dangerous" - he draws a dotted line from Austerity in post WW1 Europe to the opening of political doors for Fascism and Nazism.I found this to be the most illuminating portion of the book, especially when it points out that although Austerity ideas were completely discredited by the end of the Second World War (having been a contributory cause to the extension of the Great Depression) they made a comeback through what are called the "Enablers of Austerity" - Milton Friedman's Monetarism, Neo-liberalism with its independent Central Banks, and the IMF and the aforementioned Washington Consensus. This is the best explanation I've seen for the complete disconnect between reality and the American and European ideologues currently peddling the conservative agenda.The author delves then into the case studies that are cited in support of Austerity - various historical instances worldwide, and the delightfully named "REBLL" alliance (Romania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Lithuania) that blew up their "Debt Stars". He proceeds to demolish each case, or (to use terminology picked up from police procedurals) definitely, convincingly introduces reasonable doubt against these poster children of Austerity.Only at the very end does the book go from descriptive to prescriptive, where the author suggests that higher taxes on the (infamous) 1% and others in the high income bracket, along with "financial repression" defined as mandated holding of inflation-susceptible government bonds by the Financial Industry are potential ways to cure the ballooned Sovereign Debt (which the latter caused) without fiscal contraction. This prescription is beyond my ken to qualify as good or bad, but hey - the other guys are clearly not helping any, so I say it's worth a shot!
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