2008 Financial Crisis Link Dump

Kenneth Anderson at The Volokh Conspiracy talks about a new book on Fannie and Freddie's role in the crisis. In the post, he links an NPR interview with Gretchen Morgenson, one of the authors, and a review at the Washington Post. Anderson's post is well worth reading in full, BTW.

The book is Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon, by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner.

These reviews led me to Wikipedia's entry on George Stigler, a Nobel-winning economist and originator of the idea of 'regulatory capture,' which describes very well one aspect of my own impression of how the US government has, in large part, been corrupted.

Stigler, in turn, led me to the Mont Pelerin Society:

... an international organization composed of economists (including 8 winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences), philosophers, historians, intellectuals, business leaders, and others who favour classical liberalism. Its founders included Friedrich Hayek, Karl Popper, Ludwig von Mises, George Stigler, and Milton Friedman.

The society advocates freedom of expression, free market economic policies, and the political values of an open society.

I feel like I've been admitted to a higher (lower?) circle of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy ...

Anyway, interesting stuff. I look forward to reading the book.

PS On a somewhat related note, this is hilarious.