The Night With Professor Shiller and Great Depression

It have not been easy for people who live in some parts of Jakarta on these past days with floods and restless nights. I may not particularly suffer from this annual tragedy, but my heart goes with all who does. 

Speaking about catastrophe, I recently read the article written by the 2013 Nobel laureate in economics, Professor Robert J. Shiller from Yale University : What Good Are Economists? 

I put some excerpts here : ..Indeed, economists failed to forecast most of the major crises in the last century, including the severe 1920-21 slump, the 1980-82 back-to-back recessions, and the worst of them all, the Great Depression after the 1929 stock-market crash. But this criticism is unfair. We do not blame physicians for failing to predict all of our illnesses. Our maladies are largely random, and even if our doctors cannot tell us which ones we will have in the next year..

I recommend you all to read the rest of it directly on the Project Syndicate's page here.

After finishing the article, I randomly browsed about Douglas Irwin and his published works about Great Depression. Interestingly, I ended up looking through pictures I found along the way while surfing the world wide web. Picture does speaks louder than words. 

Take a look by yourself. I got it all from Google.

Was this real?!

Bankrupt investor Walter Thornton tries to sell his luxury car in New York following the 1929 stock market crash (Source : The Guardian)

Thanks to Professor Shiller, now let me open my Niall Ferguson's The Cash Nexus again.