Dean Baker
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| Dean Baker | |
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| Born | July 13, 1958 |
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| Fields | Economics |
| Alma mater | Swarthmore College (B.A., 1981) University of Denver (M.A., 1983) University of Michigan (Ph.D.) |
Dean Baker (b. July 13, 1958) is an American macroeconomist and co-founder and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He previously was a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor of economics at Bucknell University. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. His B.A. is from Swarthmore College. He blogs for The American Prospect.
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[edit] Financial Crisis of 2007-2009
Basing himself on house-price data-sets produced by the US government and Yale economist Robert Shiller, Baker was the earliest economist to point out the bubble in the US housing market in 2002,[1] and one of the few economists to correctly predict that the collapse of this bubble would lead to recession. He has been sharply critical of the regulatory framework of the real estate and financial industries, the use of financial instruments like CDOs, and the incompetence and conflicting interests of US politicians or regulators, such as Hank Paulson. [2]
Baker opposed the US government bailout of Wall Street banks on the basis that the only people who stood to lose from their collapse were their shareholders and well-paid CEOs. As regards any hypothetical, negative effects of not doing the bailout, he has explained repeatedly that, "We know how to keep the financial system operating even as banks go into bankruptcy and receivership,"[3] citing US government action taken during the S&L crisis of the 1980s. He has ridiculed the US elite for favoring it, asking, "How do you make a DC intellectual look less articulate than Sarah Palin being interviewed by Katie Couric? That's easy. You ask them how failure to pass the bailout will give us a Great Depression."[4]
He also authors the widely read weblog Beat The Press, where he critiques economic reporting in the leading broadsheets, NPR and other mainstream news sources.
[edit] Bibliography
- Baker, Dean (1997). Getting Prices Right: The Battle Over the Consumer Price Index. New York: M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 9780765602213. http://www.mesharpe.com/mall/resultsa.asp?Title=Getting+Prices+Right%3A+The+Debate+Over+the+Consumer+Price+Index. (winner of the 1998 Choice Book Award)
- Baker, Dean; Mark Weisbrot (1999). Social Security: The Phony Crisis. University of Chicago. ISBN 9780226035444. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/13909.ctl. An excerpt from the book.
- Baker, Dean (2006). The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer. Washington, D.C.: Center for Economic and Policy Research. ISBN 1411693957. http://conservativenannystate.org/. Note: This book is free.
- Baker, Dean (2007). The United States Since 1980. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521677554. http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521677554.
- Baker, Dean (2009). Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of The Bubble Economy. PoliPointPress. ISBN 9780981576992. http://p3books.com/plunderandblunder/.
[edit] References
- ^ The Run-Up in Home Prices: Is It Real or Is It Another Bubble?, Dean Baker, CEPR, August 2002
- ^ Real-World Economic Review, Issue no. 46, 20 March, 2008
- ^ Beat The Press, March 9, 2008
- ^ Huffington Post, September 30, 2008
[edit] External links
[edit] Informational
[edit] Media
- Dean Baker presentation on 2008-2009 economic trouble at Bucknell University
- Marketplace Public Radio (Audio): We Demand to See More Transparency, March 9, 2009
- C-SPAN's Book TV (Video): Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy, January 27, 2009
- News Hour with Jim Lehrer (Video): Massive Job Cuts Renew Calls fro Quick Action on Stimulus, January 26, 2009
- NPR's Fresh Air (Audio): The Key to Economic Stimulus?, January 13, 2009
- Bill Moyers Journal (Video), August 8, 2008
- Dean Baker argues that the debate over the economy should not be over whether to regulate, but how in the Boston Review
- Video (and audio) of debates & discussions involving Baker on Bloggingheads.tv
- Short discussion about the bailout
