About

I am a professor of economics at Texas Christian University, where I have taught since 1987.  I started this blog because:

1) so many of my non-economist friends were asking me to make sense of the current financial crisis and I wanted to create a central repository for my explanations so I could just point them to it;

2) explanations done properly require background and this blog will allow me the space and structure to offer some basic theory;

3) most of what I have read about the crisis is either too superficial or based on questionable theories.

In terms of my background, I started graduate school as more of a libertarian type: don’t tell me I can’t buy beer on Sunday and leave the economy alone! I still want my beer on Sunday, but have come to the reluctant conclusion that an extreme free-market economy is dangerously unstable. I’d like to think that’s not the case, but then there’s a lot of stuff I’d like be believe wasn’t true. Can the government solve our problems with a magic wand? Yes, if they had a magic wand, but they don’t. So, managing an economy is a dirty, messy business. But, to leave it to it’s own devices is a sure recipe for disaster.