From the latest issue of Bookforum, Joan Richardson reviews Morris Dickstein's Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression (and more and more). How did economists get it so wrong? Paul Krugman on how the Great Recession was the result not only of lax regulation in Washington and reckless risk-taking on Wall Street but also of faulty theorizing in academia. Why did nobody notice that the credit crunch was on its way? David Warsh writes to the Queen. An interview with Robert Skidelsky on why economists missed the danger signs ahead of the financial crisis. Financial markets often run our lives, and economic sociologists are trying to understand how (and more). Economics is not a natural science: We must stop perpetuating the fiction that existence itself is dictated by the immutable laws of economics. An article on the free-market fallacies of Ayn Rand. Magic and the myth of the rational market: Papua New Guinea's "big men" demonstrate one of the underlying flaws in both traditional and behavioural economics — apparently irrational actions may be socially rational (and more). There is some evidence that Adam Smith's economics are ceasing to work so well, and that we may be re-entering the world of Thomas Mun. Jamais Cascio on socioeconomic speculation and thinking about what a 21st century economy might look like (and part 2)
