Wednesday 8 May 2013

ECONOMICS FOR REAL PEOPLE: Great Myths of the Great Depression

The never-ending Euro crisis - Anatomy of an economic...

Tomorrow night the Auckland University Economics Group meets again. Here’s their note about what they’ll be discussing:

Six years on and we’re still mired in the Greatest Economic Depression since the one still known as THE Great Depression.
Last week we looked at the ongoing Euro-Crisis. This week we talk about this most famous, but in may respects the least known, of all economic disasters.
Everyone knows about the first Great Depression—but is everything they know correct?
There are many lessons from the Great Depression for the times we live in now—if only what we knew about it were actually true.
Tomorrow evening we will look at a few of the many myths around the Great Depression, and try to draw some lessons for today, asking, for example:

  • Was the Great Depression really a Crisis of Capitalism?
  • Was the Crash caused by margin trading on Wall St?
  • Which great economist (whose theories are stilled followed today) lost his shirt in the Crash he never saw coming?
  • Did the Fed really do too little to help? Or too much?
  • Did Herbert Hoover just sit back and watch things get worse?  Or make it worse?
  • Was Franklin Roosevelt chiefly responsible for getting the US back on track?  And was Michael Joseph Savage the maestro here in NZ?
  • Was recover really brought about by World War II?

Join us as we examine these stories and many more about the FIRST Great Depression.

    Date: Thursday, May 9
    Time: 6-7pm
    Location: Room 215, Level 2, University of Auckland Business School, Owen G. Glenn Building, Grafton Rd

All welcome!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

No, no, Keynes, no, too much, no, made it worse, no, no, no.

hardly worth talking about!