February 14, 2022

Henry George: Prophet of the Gilded Age

In 1873, Mark Twain published his satirical novel, The Gilded Age, an era magnificently recreated in all its greed, ruthlessness and ostentation in the new HBO series of the same name. Railroads were the hot investment of the day, fueling a frenzy of land speculation. In September of that year,

Bubble, Georgist economics, Henry George, History, Inequality, Real estate bubble

May 21, 2020

Webinar with Richard Vague, author of A Brief History of Doom, May 17, 2020

In A Brief History of Doom, Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises, Richard Vague simultaneously fills in a gap in Henry George's economic model, and torpedoes the conventional Keynesian model of the business cycle.

Bubble, Financial crisis, Henry George, Macroeconomics, Real estate bubble

November 16, 2019

The Big Bean Bubble

In the mini-economy of Beanland, reckless bank lending has caused a crash. Hardly anybody has money to buy beans. The price of beans plummets. To the farmers it looks like there's a bean surplus. Actually, there's a deficit in demand for beans.

Banking, Bubble, Real estate bubble

July 19, 2019

Review: A Brief History of Doom by Richard Vague

A Brief History of Doom: Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises is the most important economics publication to come along in years. The author, Richard Vague, a retired banker, documents how a necessary and sufficient explanation for a boom and bust cycle is an episode over several years of excessive