The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a panel of academic economists based in Cambridge, Mass., says the recession lasted 18 months, from December 2007 to June of 2009. What are these guys snorting, smoking, and drinking?
The Worldly Philosophers is a book about the world’s most influential economists such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, and John Maynard Keynes. The book tells how economists, while not rock stars or famous politicians, have tremendous impact on economies via their philosophies. The problem is that if their philosophy is wrong, it can positively and negatively affect peoples’ lives for decades.
For example, Malthus, who was not really an economist but a Protestant preacher, believed strongly in frugality. So, he came up with the philosophy that economics is the allocation of scarce resources. His ideas on scarcity, the idea that there was not enough for everyone, justified imperialism, the conquest of other people and land in order to take their resources. That is how the English, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Spanish and others spread out over the world to claim scarce resources for their countries, murdering millions of people in the process.
Today, most economists subscribe to John Maynard Keynes’ philosophy of economics. Keynes believed the government should stimulate the economy when necessary. Today, Keynes is spinning in his grave because his economic philosophy has been extensively manipulated to benefit a few at the cost of many. Today, the US has a deficit and debt that cannot be paid back. We’re on the path to financial destruction, which is why gold is hitting all-time highs.
If you want to survive, it’s important to educate yourself and seek economists who understand the cause of this crisis and why the obsolete economic theories being used are making this crisis worse.
