a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem <object width="853" height="505"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/d0nERTFo-Sk&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/d0nERTFo-Sk&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="853" height="505"></embed></object>
Pretty good starting point for this. http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticke...ce-Chaser-Why-Most-'Experts'-Missed-the-Crash The fact most economists, policymakers and Wall Street strategists didn't see the current crisis coming is undeniable. But why? Why did the "experts" drop the ball so badly? One expert who did predict the crisis, James Galbraith, economics professor at the University of Texas at Austin, says the majority of his peers were blinded by a belief in free-market philosophy and the notion markets are rational. Alan Greenspan recently admitted to a "flaw" in this philosophy, of which he was the most noted practitioner: "I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, was such as that they were capable of protecting their own shareholders," the former Fed chairman said. A self-described "financial ambulance chaser," Galbraith, the son of famed economist and market historian John Kenneth Galbraith, said two major developments in the mid-2000s tipped him off that something was amiss: The huge expansion in household debt as many Americans funded consumption by borrowing, especially via home equity loans. The "abandonment" of regulatory oversight at the Federal level, which insured the "most aggressive, most abusive" players in the mortgage market would flourish. Unfortunately, Galbraith doesn't hold much hope that this crisis will change much the outlook for economists, noting they don't study history and many are "still in denial" about what's transpired. <object width="292" height="219"><embed height="219" width="292" allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/fop/embedflv/swf/fop_wrapper.swf?id=11043011&autoStart=0&prepanelEnable=1&infopanelEnable=1&carouselEnable=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object> [rquoter]Galbraith: That’s an excellent question, but the reality is that training in economics does not involve coming to grips with history. Economic history is barely taught in graduate economics departments, and the history of economic thought isn’t taught at all. So figures that have been fundamental to understanding phenomena like the Great Depression–or for that matter the Great Crash–are simply not in the curriculum. Keynes, who taught my father John Kenneth Galbraith–who understood the Great Depression as well as any figure in the 20th century–… you won’t find them on the reading lists. That is in some sense the shocking commentary on the intellectual direction that the profession has taken.[/rquoter]
If you call yourself a financial expert and you did not see this coming, then I wouldn't call you a financial expert. Greenspan denying he didn't see it coming is a complete farce.
So we are supposed to believe that you can become an economist without ever studying Keynes. I am not an economist, but I did get an undergraduate degree in economics. I do not think I had a single class that did not discuss Keynes. Some teachers loved Keynes, others hated him, but they all discussed him and he was an integral part of the classes.
^Galbraith has criticized both major schools (neoclassical in particular) for not teaching the study of economic histories in their proper contexts, and therefore they have failed to form adequate and realistic responses (predicting it would help) to what is happening right now.
Most didn't see it coming, obviously. If they did, then we would have a bunch of millionaire financial experts, not a bunch of bankrupt banks.
video backstory. [rquoter]The Story Behind the Hayek-Keynes Rap Video When Russell Roberts, an economics professor at George Mason University and a fellow at its Mercatus Center and at the Hoover Institution, was approached last April out of the blue by a total stranger, filmmaker John Papola, and asked if he wanted to make a movie, he replied, "Well, that'd be fun." But, Mr. Roberts told FutureOfCapitalism.com in a phone interview, he wasn't sure the movie would actually happen – he'd been approached before by other people for similar ventures only to see them sputter out. And indeed, the project that became the Hayek vs. Keynes rap "Fear the Boom and Bust" had some false starts. The economist and the filmmaker started out with the idea of a situation comedy about John Maynard Keynes coming back to life as a financially struggling assistant professor or high school economics teacher, to the tune of the Bee Gees disco song Stayin' Alive from Saturday Night Fever. But, Mr. Roberts said, they were worried about the rights to the music. So even though Mr. Roberts, who has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago, describes himself as "not a rap fan, particularly," they settled instead on a rap video, which taped for three hours in front of a green screen in a studio and another 16 hours on location in Lower Manhattan from 1 p.m. on Sunday December 20 to 5 a.m. on Monday December 21. A snowstorm meant that Mr. Roberts only managed to make it up to Virginia at about 8 p.m. on Sunday. The video, released Monday January 25, has emerged as a runaway smash hit, with about 600,000 views so far on YouTube, including tens of thousands in six subtitled foreign language versions. "It's kind of shocking," Mr. Roberts said. "Awesome." The video has been linked on more than 100 blogs, and at one point was the subject of 50 to 100 "tweets" each hour on Twitter. It's been shown to a class at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and the professor who teaches introductory Economics at Harvard, Greg Mankiw, linked to it from his Web log. A "donate now" button on the Econstories.tv site set up to provide information about the video, the lyrics to the rap, credits for the actors, and additional related resources has attracted about 60 paying contributors, Mr. Roberts said. For Mr. Roberts, the rap video showing John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek dueling over their competing economic theories is a natural step in a career that has regularly focused on making economics accessible to a popular audience. He's written three novels, contributes to a blog, Café Hayek, and does a weekly podcast available at Econtalk.org. "People want video and audio knowledge, not just written knowledge," he said. He said that producing the video cost "tens of thousands of dollars" that he raised from "a bunch of donors" through the Mercatus Center. He said it would have cost even more except that some of the dozens of people who worked on the project either volunteered their services or worked at reduced rates. "Video is cheap, but high-quality, high-end video like this is expensive," Mr. Roberts said. "I think compelling is important, and you've got to pay to create compelling." The only "major media" attention that has contributed to the 600,000 YouTube views was a piece on National Public Radio's "Planet Money" program. Mr. Roberts happened to be at the NPR studio at the same time as the pop superstar KeSha. Mr. Roberts hadn't heard of her and originally thought she was an intern at NPR, but it turns out that she had the top two songs on iTunes. KeSha initially resisted listening to the Keynes-Hayek rap, Mr. Roberts said, but with some convincing eventually did. The Econstories.tv site quotes her as saying, of the lyrics — which include lines like, "We've been goin' back n forth for a century/ I want to steer markets/ I want them set free" and "Your so-called stimulus will make things even worse" — "It's really good rapping!" Aside from the NPR piece, the traffic has all been driven by blogs, Twitter, and word of mouth. "It's an incredible world," Mr. Roberts said.[/rquoter]
I've been listening to his podcast for about a year now and while I don't necessarily agree with all of his conclusions it is definately one of the better podcasts out there.
