We're depressed. Not yet ready for growth. Still unable to get credit despite all our hard work.
It's no surprise that we use an emotional vocabulary to speak about money and markets. Just like we use economic words to discuss (poorly) our feelings:
Managing anger, stingy with words, selling our souls.
Few know that before he wrote An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776, Adam Smith wrote an equally great book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759).
Far from embracing the person-less world of an Invisible Hand (he uses the phrase just three times in hundreds and hundreds of pages of writing), Smith believes in the complex connection between our feelings, how we work, and the incredibly difficult meaning of experiences like the division of labour, productivity and the like.
A couple weeks ago I walked through the Providence Place Mall, with a number of big empty storefronts. I felt terribly discouraged.
We need to think more about these connections between feelings and finances, both personally and nationally — and especially avoid the hysterical fears of toughen-up-or-starve Spartan austerity.
We might consider the crucial importance of gender — the role it played in creating our current global financial slump, and the ways thoughtful female leadership might help solve some of our problems. (Goodness knows that Larry Summers isn't going to be the feminist beacon leading the way, for instance.)
I wrote about this way back when in 2009, and it's been on my mind as of late.
But economists like to think about gender just about as much as they're willing to consider the irrationality of human behaviours, or to believe that anyone thought about economics before Adam Smith. (Reading Bernard Mandeville would help with both problems.)
Honestly, I think we would be better served reading Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders than any column or monograph I've encountered in the last year.
If you're interested in this history, two extremely smart if very academic books:
Emma Rothschild's Economic Sentiments and Joyce Appleby's Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth Century England both have brilliant things to say.
Appleby's more recent Relentless Revolution speaks to a broader audience.
(Wow, both by pioneering female academics.)
I hope we're feeling better soon!
It's no surprise that we use an emotional vocabulary to speak about money and markets. Just like we use economic words to discuss (poorly) our feelings:
Managing anger, stingy with words, selling our souls.
| Adam Smith in Edinburgh |
Few know that before he wrote An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776, Adam Smith wrote an equally great book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759).
Far from embracing the person-less world of an Invisible Hand (he uses the phrase just three times in hundreds and hundreds of pages of writing), Smith believes in the complex connection between our feelings, how we work, and the incredibly difficult meaning of experiences like the division of labour, productivity and the like.
A couple weeks ago I walked through the Providence Place Mall, with a number of big empty storefronts. I felt terribly discouraged.
We need to think more about these connections between feelings and finances, both personally and nationally — and especially avoid the hysterical fears of toughen-up-or-starve Spartan austerity.
| Movie Star Robin Wright as economically savvy and sexy Moll Flanders |
We might consider the crucial importance of gender — the role it played in creating our current global financial slump, and the ways thoughtful female leadership might help solve some of our problems. (Goodness knows that Larry Summers isn't going to be the feminist beacon leading the way, for instance.)
I wrote about this way back when in 2009, and it's been on my mind as of late.
But economists like to think about gender just about as much as they're willing to consider the irrationality of human behaviours, or to believe that anyone thought about economics before Adam Smith. (Reading Bernard Mandeville would help with both problems.)
Honestly, I think we would be better served reading Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders than any column or monograph I've encountered in the last year.
 |
| Professor Joyce Appleby |
If you're interested in this history, two extremely smart if very academic books:
Emma Rothschild's Economic Sentiments and Joyce Appleby's Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth Century England both have brilliant things to say.
Appleby's more recent Relentless Revolution speaks to a broader audience.
(Wow, both by pioneering female academics.)
I hope we're feeling better soon!
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