Dr. Gerald Epstein is Professor of Economics and founding Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Among his many excellent works he and Juan Antonio Montecino calculated the costs to the United States economy of its financial sector across three categories: rents and excess profits; misallocation; and the crisis costs of 2008. Gerald believes that the number he arrives at, an excess cost of $22.3 trillion between 1990 and 2023, is likely to be a modest underestimation because the costs of the financial crisis may be much greater and the numbers do not involve lost tax revenues from various financial innovations.
Related Articles

EU politics
Renegade Inc – The great British train robbery
The former British Prime Minister and devout neoliberal, Margaret Thatcher was in favour of mass privatisation but even she claimed that privatising the British Rail system was ‘a privatisation too far’, but this didn’t stop […]

Economics
Branko Milanović – Recent trends in global income distribution and their political implications
On 1 April in Berlin in our series of talks entitled “Economics beyond the Swabian hausfrau” Branko Milanović discussed the evolution in global income inequality and its political implications; in particular, the rise of the […]

Climate Crisis
George Monbiot – Extinction Rebellion?
On #NovaraFM, James Butler is joined by Guardian columnist, writer and environmental campaigner George Monbiot to discuss the launch of Extinction Rebellion. What can be done about climate change? Does technology have the answers? Are […]
Be the first to comment