Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2021
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1086/711446
Abstract
Over thirty million Americans just filed first-time unemployment claims as a result of the economic devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic, pushing unemployment to its highest levels since the Great Depression. Despite that, the US stock markets recorded in April their best month since 1987; after an initial shock, the markets rallied steadily, rising over 30 percent since their lows in late March. Most economists sounded puzzled and offered fanciful daily explanations. Even Paul Krugman had little to say, suggesting that "Investors are buying stocks in part because they have nowhere else to go."
But it’s no wonder the markets defied the economic crash. For the markets, there is nothing like a good crisis when the right people are in power. Philip Mirowski wrote tellingly about this during the last debacle — the financial meltdown of 2008 — under the moniker "Never let a serious crisis go to waste." Now, too, the Faustian logic as to why institutional investors just put their bets on the market should not escape us.
Disciplines
Law | Law and Economics | Public Law and Legal Theory
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Bernard E. Harcourt,
On Cooperationism: An End to the Economic Plague,
47(S2)
Critical Inq.
S90
(2021).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/4455
Comments
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