It comes as something of a surprise that Posner, a doyen of the market-oriented law-and-economics movement, should deliver a roundhouse punch to the proposition that markets are self-correcting. It might also seem odd that a federal appellate judge (and University of Chicago law lecturer) would be among the first out of the gate with a comprehensive book on the financial crisis — if, that is, the judge were any other judge. But Posner is the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s successor as the country’s most omnivorous and independent-minded public intellectual. By now, his dozens of books just about fill their own wing in the Library of Congress.
It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer. Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions. I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters. Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs. Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77. I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not. Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi
I heard him interviewed on NPR or MSNBC -- he also is or was a card carrying CATO Institute conservative which is even more amazing.
ReplyDeleteI notice he says "A Failure of Capitalism," which would appear to indicate he doesn't see it as a total failure.
ReplyDeleteAs I recall his interview -- I think it was Olbermann who pressed him -- he thinks that government needs to step in and regulate markets because they are incapable of regulating themselves, a huge philosophical switch for someone who apparently once believed exactly the opposite.
ReplyDeleteAs the review you posted notes, "people made decisions that were individually rational but collectively irrational.... 'We are learning,' Posner writes, 'that we need a more active and intelligent government to keep our model of a capitalist economy from running off the rails.'”