One Economist's Mission to Redeem the Field of Finance
Found via The Big Picture.
Among the members of the rogues' gallery blamed for the crash of the economy in 2008, none have worn the black hat of villainy quite as convincingly as greedy financiers.
Robert J. Shiller, however, sees them and their field in shades of gray.
"It's kind of a mythology that's developed around finance," says Mr. Shiller, a behavioral economist, professor at Yale University, and teacher of many future financiers. Rapacious Wall Street types, he says, may make handy bad guys in the movies. "The problem is, we can't live in a mythic world. We have to live in the real world."
And in the real world, Mr. Shiller argues in his new book, Finance and the Good Society (Princeton University Press), finance is a powerful and necessary tool to keep society running.
It is the architecture that allows people to reach their goals, such as paying for college or starting a business, and to protect their assets throughout their lives.
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Related book: Finance and the Good Society
