William Davies Quotes


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Arguably, for most of American History, most of the “smartest” people contributed to manufacturing, construction, research and development—activities that produce things that are wanted and/or needed. However, Wall Street began attracting and paying for some of the smartest people in the society, who when they engaged in finance—not only contributed less to manufacturing, but began to create highly complex financial instruments and procedures that few people could understand and with which regulators have difficulty understanding. These and the other schemes of financing have been major factors in the economic problems that have beset the economy including the meltdown of 2008 and the subsequent Great Rescission.


This quotation is fascinating because it illustrates the degree to which the Southern people censored themselves on what in most cultures would be morale issues. In many ways the ability to ignore reality made it easier for the Confederate government to operate, but distorted the decisions that were made. Arguably, in most other cultures, public opinion on the reality of the situation would have brought the war to an end sooner and ironically on far better terms than they ended up with. Eggleston was an accomplished writer who had served in the Confederate army of the Civil War. 20 year after the war he wrote a series of articles for the prestigious Northern Atlantic Monthly trying to convey the war from the Southerner’s point of view.


If the economy is strong voters will often ignore of forgive leadership failures. But not in a poor economy.


Sovereign credit substitution is where the government, one way or another, assumes and guarantees the debts of private corporations. This is an elegant way of saying: “taxpayer bailouts”


Born thought that her agency was responsible for regulating the new esoteric financial products—derivatives including credit default swaps—for otherwise there would be no regulation at all of financial products that could dwarf the stock and bond market. Summers persuaded her to back off. When the Meltdown of 2008 hit, the huge derivative exposure of the large banks and some insurance companies was so great that it was one of the major causes for the meltdown of the entire banking system. Summers, normally a great economist not only called this one wrong, but later, along with most other government and private economists ignored a very explicit warning—See {637168}, {637986}, and {620038}.


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William Davies (born 1976) is an English writer, political and sociological theorist. His work focuses on the issues of consumerism, happiness, and the history and function of expertise on society. Davies has written for a variety of newspapers and periodicals including The Guardian, New Left Review, London Review of Books, and The Atlantic. In 2015 Davies published his second book The Happiness Industry, which assesses the relationship between consumer capitalism, big data and positive psychology. Davies is Professor of Political Economy at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he is Co-Director of The Political Economy Research Centre in London.