"How Markets Fail" book

Looks kind of interesting, but it looks like Cassidy is going after free market purism from a Keynesian perspective; there's no criticism of the market per se and of capital, although I might be wrong, not having read it.

saw this plugged on the BBC 'Stephanomics' blog, where the BBC's economics editor argues "it's not really capitalism that we have today" (under the 'free market = capitalism' fallacy beloved of economists). that would imply it's a Keyensian book, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth reading for its criticisms.

i don't know the book at all, but the author is the economics columnist for the new yorker, a completely mainstream-liberal magazine.

I heard this guy on WNYC today at work. He sounded relatively bright. He was certainly critical of market purism, monetarism, etc., and seemed to be arguing that game theory and behavioral economics will replace them as the new intellectual paradigm.

At one point the interviewer asked him about a resurgence of Marx and Cassidy lauded Marxist analysis, of course in a completely economistic way. Dickhead then went on to say something to the effect of, "Marx's economic analyses were great, but the system he designed was horrible", as though the bearded dude's corpse handed a blueprint of the Soviet Union to Lenin.

Anyways, Cassidy seemed to have a good grasp of the various historical approaches capitalists have taken to mitigate crisis and I guess the book may point to ways in which they may try to form policy in the future. I'm not rushing out to get it, but like others said there may be some interesting points in there.

FYI: you can find that Cassidy interview here if you're interested.

Well on that blog, the only quote from him is this:

And that definitely isn't a Keynesian comment.

not in the sense Keynes wouldn't have described it as 'crony capitalism', but the tenor of the blog is that unprecedented state borrowing has saved capitalism (supposedly at the cost of turning it into something else). that's a very Keynesian idea, but you're right that's the blog rather than the book it endorses.