A Grande Degeneração

Niall Ferguson – The Great Degeneration

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/04/2013 15:39 -0400

• Central Banks
 
• China
 
• Consumer protection
 
• Corruption
 
• ETC
 
• Fail
 
• Hong Kong
 
• Japan
 
• Krugman
 
• Monetary Policy
 
• Natural Gas
 
• Niall Ferguson
 
• Paul Krugman
 
• Paul McCulley
 
• Reality
 
• Stimulus Spending
• Unemployment

While Harvard historian Niall Ferguson's off-the-cuff remarks during the Q&A were in his words "as stupid as they were insensitive", the core message of his presentation was clear: the party of the last 20 years is now over and the longer we fail to address the real issues the bigger the hangover will be in the future. The central question Ferguson asks is whether our institutions, corporations and governments, are degenerating. As Lance Roberts of Street Talk Live notes Ferguson believes that without addressing the structural problems that plague the economy from production to employment – stimulus will fail. The reality is that the 'punch bowl' won't fix employment growth, economic growth or the rule of law.

Via Lance Roberts of Street Talk Live blog,

I am at the 10^th annual Strategic Investment Conference in California which is put on annually by Altegris Investments and John Mauldin.   Niall Ferguson is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College at Oxford.   He is also the author of 14 books including the must read “The Ascent Of Money: A Financial History Of The World.”   The following are the notes from his presentation.

Capitalism and the rule of law the central theme of Niall’s forthcoming book “The Great Degeneration.”  

What is it that ails us?   Has there been enough stimulus or is the current economic malaise a symptom of something else?

Adam Smith – brought forth the idea of the “stationary state” where economies transition from growth to stability. However, it is the rule of law that allows countries to grow.

Historically, what makes nations strong is the guarantee that justice will be done. This is what separated Europe from China during the 1800’s. Today, the west is now approaching the“stationary state.”

So, the central question of the “great degeneration” is whether our institutions, corporations and governments, are degenerating.   There are four symptoms of degeneration:

• Breakdown of the contract between generations.
• Excess regulation
• Rule of lawyers
• Decline of civil society
• Mais