The Liberal Hour

by John Kenneth Galbraith

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Spacious issues
How to reread history
The nostalgic farmer

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy

201 pages, Hardcover

Published December 1, 1960

About the author

John Kenneth Galbraith was a Canadian-American economist. He was a Keynesian and an institutionalist, a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism and democratic socialism. His books on economic topics were bestsellers in the 1950s and 1960s. A prolific author, he produced four dozen books & over a 1000 articles on many subjects. Among his most famous works was his economics trilogy: American Capitalism (1952), The Affluent Society (1958) & The New Industrial State (1967). He taught at Harvard University for many years. He was active in politics, serving in the administrations of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson. He served as US Ambassador to India under John F. Kennedy.

He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom twice: one in 1946 from President Truman, and another in 2000 from President Clinton. He was also awarded the Order of Canada in 1997, and in 2001, the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian award, for strengthening ties between India and the USA.

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dated but with some interesting comments on the great depression and investment in rural vacation communities.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this more as a historical artifact (it is the book form of several lectures Galbraith had made prior to 1960) rather than a treatise on economics. I enjoyed his analysis of the Great Depression and his piece "The Nature of Social Nostalgia."

I also liked this bit; the more things change . . .

"In other cases companies were organized to hold securities in other companies and thus to manufacture more securities to sell to the public. This was true of the great investment trusts. During 1929 one investment house, Goldman, Sachs & Company, organized and sold nearly a billion dollars worth of securities in three interconnected investment trusts--Goldman, Sachs Trading Corporation, Shenandoah Corporation, and the Blue Ridge Corporation. All eventually depreciated virtually to nothing. This was, perhaps, the greatest financial fiasco in our history."

It seems investment houses have long been in the habit of manufacturing investments that "unexpectedly" collapse when the underlying security/mortgage/whatever declines in value.

[Edward Weiss · Rating 5 out of 5]

After about 60 years, we still haven't learned. Until the masses educate themselves enough to avoid getting sucked in time and time again by the popular rhetoric of political power seekers often in the pocket of those with pockets full of politicians and the wealth to buy them, we will continue to have the same problems or similar ones that have only mutated into a disguised version of what they were.

Benjamin Franklin: Citizens, we have “a republic, if you can keep it.”

We haven't!

Our republic has fallen to those we were warned about by James Madison in Federalist Paper #10: Factions! Particularly, factions with wealth!