"Alexander Field, Greg Clark, And Optimism About The Current Unpleasantness"

Why aren't we doing more to rebuild our infrastructure at a time when our needs are high and borrowing costs, labor costs, and other costs of infrastructure are at bargain prices? Not to mention the employment benefits that would come with enhanced infrastructure investment.

And why aren't we doing more to shore up our financial infrastructure through new regulations and oversight of the banking sector so that the problems we are having presently are less likely to reappear? There have been some changes in financial regulation, but not enough, and the financial sector is doing its best to block any further progress in this area:

Alexander Field, Greg Clark, and Optimism about the Current Unpleasantness, by Eric Rauchway: On the jacket of Alexander Field’s new book A Great Leap Forward, my colleague Greg Clark says this:

As we sit mired in the Great Recession, Alexander Field’s exciting reappraisal of the Great Depression offers surprising solace. By showing the Great Depression was coupled with the most rapid technological advance in U.S. history, he fundamentally recasts the history of the 1930s. But he also offers hope that our own depression likely will have no long-run costs to the U.S. economy.

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