Tag Archives: finance

Capitalism’s lost social capital

A few years ago Francis Fukuyama wrote Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity. The short of it is that modern economies tend to be “high trust,” you can rely on more than simply your family to get … Continue reading

Posted in culture, economics | Tagged , , | 33 Comments

When liberals discover the utility of custom & tradition

There is a clip of a recent bloggingheads.tv between Matt Yglesias and Mark Schmitt which is rather amusing, as they express a rather conservative sensibility:

Posted in politics | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Muddle to the Right?

I’m reading Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World right now. I’ve not read Ferguson before, and I have to say he’s a rather good prose stylist. Though dense with data & concept The Ascent … Continue reading

Posted in economics, politics | Tagged , , , | 18 Comments

Knowledge & the Second Bank of the United States

Reading about the controversy surrounding the Second Bank of the United States, I get the sense that we know more about how economics operates today than we did 180 years ago. But how much more? Enough to matter? I assume … Continue reading

Posted in culture, economics, history | Tagged , , , | 15 Comments