Adam Curtis
Adam Curtis

Ever since the economic crisis in 2008, millions of people have accepted cuts in all sorts of things - from real wages and living standards to benefits and hospital care - without any real opposition. The cuts may be right, or they may be stupid - but the astonishing thing is how no-one really challenges them.

Adam Curtis
Adam Curtis

So much of the language that surrounds us - from things like economics, management theory, and the algorithms built into computer systems - appears to be objective and neutral. But in fact, it is loaded with powerful, and very debatable, political assumptions about how society should work and what human beings are really like.

Adam Curtis
Adam Curtis

A conveyor belt of Think Tank pundits and allied operatives poured into the TV studios, and together they built a fortress around Mrs. Thatcher's memory that was rooted in theories about economics. They did this because economics is the only language that wonks understand.

Adam Curtis
Adam Curtis

Journalists, whose job is to pull back and tell dramatic stories that bring power into focus, find it impossible because things like economic theory are both incomprehensible and, above all, boring. The same is true of 'management science.'

Adam Davidson
Adam Davidson

Economics is all about consumption. People either spend money now or they use financial instruments - like bonds, stocks and savings accounts - so they can spend more later.

Adam Davidson
Adam Davidson

Much of what we consider the American way of life is rooted in the period of remarkably broad, shared economic growth, from around 1900 to about 1978.

Adam Davidson
Adam Davidson

One of the great political and economic challenges of our time is figuring out the balance between wealth that benefits society and wealth that distorts.

Adam Davidson
Adam Davidson

The economics profession advances by one confusing financial disaster at a time.

Adam Davidson
Adam Davidson

The idea of confidence, of the emotions of the population, is an incredibly important one in economics. John Maynard Keynes called it 'animal spirit.' And if people are feeling generally good about the future, they're more likely to spend money, to start new companies; companies are more likely to hire people, make investments.

Adam Davidson
Adam Davidson

If the American government can't stand behind the dollar, the world's benchmark currency, then the global financial system will very likely enter a new era in which there is much less trade and much less economic growth. It would be, by most accounts, the largest self-imposed financial disaster in history.