Naomi Klein, Milton Friedman, Jonathan Chait and the Brooklyn Book Festival | Business

kleinfox

That’s Naomi Klein signing books, and me waiting expectantly for someone to bring me a book to sign, at the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday (supereditor Ben Loehnen took the photo, with my camera). A few people did ask me to sign their books, and the guy running the Book Court tent asked me to sign the rest of their stock (about four copies), because my book was “selling like hotcakes.” Apparently hotcake sales are in the single digits in Brooklyn these days.

I bought Klein’s The Shock Doctrine a couple weeks ago because I thought I ought to read a few chapters before appearing on a panel with her (C-SPAN BookTV taped the panel discussion; I’ll post something when it airs). My knowledge of the book was previously limited to Jonathan Chait’s takedown of it. After reading the first third of it I would agree with Chait that she paints with an awfully broad brush. And I don’t really buy her depiction of torture and free-market economics as inextricably linked.

But I’m nonetheless pretty impressed with what I have read. Klein does a great job of marshaling recent history into a compelling, at times outrage-inducing narrative. And her account of how Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek gave their backing (tacit in Friedman’s case; entirely explicit in Hayek’s) to Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile has caused this particular Friedman and Hayek admirer to have some serious second thoughts. I knew the basics of Friedman’s involvement before, but Klein does a good job of exposing the excuses for it as pretty dodgy. Both Hayek (with The Road to Serfdom) and Friedman (with Capitalism and Freedom) had made the case that economic freedom was essential to liberty. But in the case of Chile they both decided that liberty was less important than free-market reforms. Which ought to seriously call into question their credibility as freedom fighters.

I should add here that Klein was quite charming in person and that I’m very impressionable. Just ask Ernie Sponzilli, who convinced me in kindergarten that he had a pet baby blue whale. But still, I’m thinking that maybe those of us in econowonkdom ought to stop dismissing Klein out of hand for her oversimplifications and polemics and start at least taking on the substance of her economic arguments.

Stocks Rally Further in Run-up to EU Summit

MOSCOW — Global stocks enjoyed one of their best days in weeks on Tuesday ahead of a summit of European leaders that’s expected to be dominated by calls to boost economic growth.

Europe remains the focus of attention across all financial markets in the run-up to the June 17 Greek election that could go a long way to determining the country’s membership of the euro as well as the future of the single currency zone.

qqi239

1.The location is right.
2.No amount of regulation will fix current problems in financial markets – she is right about it too.

BTW, what is the meaning of the world ‘liberty’ in states where there is no freedom of commerce?
donthelibertariandemocrat

I was thinking of reading Klein’s book, until I read a sample on the Google book service. She gives a MF quote about Econ Crises as an opportunity for change, that I couldn’t find in my MF books. However, I know MF’s general view on this from his essay in “The Essence of Friedman” entitled “Monetary Policies for the 1980′s”, an essay that I’ve read numerous times.

Now, in that essay, MF does argue that crises do produce the possibility of real change. But, as an example, he points out how the Great Depression brought forth the FDIC, which he approving says is the most important structural change in monetary institutions since 1914. ( p.424 ) On the same page, he says that he hopes that we do not have an economic crisis, and suggests that the most likely one would involve high inflation, not deflation, as in the current crisis.

Also, in that essay, he reasserts his belief that an independent Fed is not a good idea, and that a cult of the leader of the Fed is a bad idea. In fact, the main argument of the essay is that a more stable and predictable monetary system would help keep us out of a financial crisis, like one produced by runaway inflation, I suppose. Anyway, anyone can read the essay for themselves, and see if they can find a “Shock Doctrine” in it.

I then read a section about Nixon and Friedman, which didn’t even mention the Guaranteed Income that almost passed, and is discussed in Daniel Moynihan’s book “The Politics of a Guaranteed Income”. Recently, I read on Worthwhile Canadian Initiative that the Greens have proposed a NIT in Canada.

Maybe the book is worth a read, but she also misunderstands Adam Smith, who has competently been defended by Amartya Sen recently in the FT. So tell me what you ultimately think about the book.
donthelibertariandemocrat

It occurred to me that I had avoided the issue of Hayek and Friedman in Chile. The reason is that this is an old debate for me, going back to the early 80′s. I was neither a supporter of Allende or Pinochet, but I did have a friend who had served in Allende’s govt and was a very intelligent and decent man. I faulted Friedman for his judgment, but didn’t see it as having any bearing on his overall views.

Anyway, in the early 80′s, I was invited to go to Nicaragua. My host was to be Tomas Borge. I was a strong critic of the US meddling in Nicaraguan Affairs, but also a strong critic of the Sandanista’s Econ Program. By basic view was that it would lead to starvation.

I would have gone on the trip but for one major problem, as i remember it: Getting there necessitated flying on some dubious airplanes, at least in my view. I ended up not going, but simply for that reason.

I’m pretty sure that the person pushing me to take this trip hoped that I would get into some kind of trouble in Nicaragua with my hosts. He was probably hoping that I would be thrown out. Nevertheless, I thought that going to a country led by people you didn’t agree with, as long as you to stuck to your principles, was fine.

Too bad that I didn’t go. It might have been my one chance in life to make news.
http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2009/09/25/g20-g8-un/ In Pittsburgh, the G20 supplants the G8. And forget about the UN | The Curious Capitalist | TIME.com

[...] table, where the discussions are more serious and food-fights rare. Now there are those—such as my new best friend Naomi Klein—who would say that’s the problem with the G20. But I kind of like it. Yay, grownups! [...]