Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth open by distinguishing “good” from “bad”
public anger. So-called good anger stems from moral indignation against
societal violators, while bad anger is an irrational, tribal energy
manipulated for political ends by populist politicians. In the authors’
estimation, recent public anger has been (mostly) good, due to
macroeconomic trends (wage stagnation and inequality, asset bubbles) and
indignation over the biased responses to the global financial crisis a
decade ago. Although written before the global pandemic, the book also
provides a framework to analyze the effects of the COVID-19 crisis,
something that has only further inflated micro stressors on top of macro
challenges.
The authors argue that throughout recent history the system of capitalism
can be likened to that of a repeatedly crashing computer. But in contrast
to previous systemic crises like the Great Depression or 1970s-era
stagflation, the capitalist system never successfully rebooted after the
global financial crisis. This means that while governments successfully
repaired Capitalism 1.0 (pre–Great Depression) and Capitalism 2.0 (the
Keynesian period), Capitalism 3.0 (our neoliberal period) was unable to
reset after bugs crashed the system.
And what exactly were these software bugs? Wage stagnation, asset bubbles,
excessive bank leverage, and inequality. The book highlights this well but
could also have delved deeper into the changing political economy, since
such outcomes are a product of the economic system itself, as well as the
consequence of events that changed the political landscape.
The final section is dedicated to proposals, including helicopter money,
dual interest rates, fiscal councils, raising money from licensing,
sovereign wealth funds, and carbon taxes. Unfortunately, most of these
measures have been proposed before and include well-known economic
drawbacks. Yet the authors’ most intriguing idea is the sovereign wealth
fund, which they propose governments use more aggressively by harnessing
low (or negative) interest rates on public bonds to invest in the stock
market. The COVID-19 crisis offers a good opportunity for these funds
because interest rates on safe assets are even lower and stock prices are
depressed.
Overall, Angrynomics provides a good lens to understand the
current political events in a broader context. It is also remarkably
prescient, given that it outlines a conceptual framework of micro and macro
stressors that may soon allow us to understand the implications of the
unprecedented COVID-19 crisis.
