October 7, 2008

Another Great Depression? Noble Prize Winning Economist Becker Says No


Is this a final "Crisis of Global Capitalism" -- to borrow the title of a book by George Soros written shortly after the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98? The crisis that kills capitalism has been said to happen during every major recession and financial crisis ever since Karl Marx prophesized the collapse of capitalism in the middle of the 19th century. Although I admit to having greatly underestimated the severity of the current crisis, I am confident that sizable world economic growth will resume before very long under a mainly capitalist world economy.

Consider, for example, that in the decade after various predictions of the collapse of global capitalism following the Asian crisis, both world GDP and world trade experienced unprecedented growth thanks to the power of market competition on a global scale. The South Korean economy, for example, was pummeled during that crisis, but has had significant economic growth since. World economic growth will recover once we are over the present severe financial difficulties.

Read more from Noble Prize winning Economist Gary Becker here from Tuesday's Wall Street Journal.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Kuang L
Well... it is going to be over at some point of time, but the problem is how long? and nobody on earth can the answere.

Anonymous said...

Another finacial crisis? Okay. Another great depression? No way. If you look at the amount of people at Subway, Chipotle, Cub Foods and Target everyday, it doesn't really look like were in to much of a depression. If i'm not mistaken during the great depression of 1929-1939 people were eating potatoes for every meal.Doesn't look like that to me.

Danny Cameron