Ashoka Mody and Raghuram G. Rajan for PS Read More

Spin Dictators, by Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman; A Crash Course on Crises, by Markus K. Brunnermeier and Ricardo Reis; and more The PS Say More Newsletter [PS Read More]( In this week's edition of PS Read More, we share recommendations from Ashoka Mody, Visiting Professor of International Economic Policy at Princeton University, and highlight a forthcoming work by the University of Chigago's Raghuram G. Rajan, a former governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Ashoka Mody Recommends... Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century]( By Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman "This engaging and frightening book argues that Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew pioneered a new kind of dictatorship based not on in-your-face brutality, but on a more subtle ruthlessness obscured by the apparent use of democratic instruments. Shut down universities with troublesome student bodies on the pretext of low enrollment; throw opponents in jail over charges of defamation or embezzlement – the possibilities are endless. The key, Lee determined, is to maintain the façade of democracy while you subvert it. And his playbook has since been copied and expanded, though Lee’s imitators almost never aspire to his economic success." [The Struggle for a Decent Politics: On “Liberal” as an Adjective]( By Michael Walzer "In this book, which Walzer says may be his last, the author applies his trademark beauty and bluntness to make a plea for the infusion of morality into public life. Walzer’s 'liberal man' respects others in much the same way as Adam Smith’s 'moral individual' sympathizes with them. In practical terms, this means that political antagonists respect plurality and compete in accordance with the rules of the game. Nationalists can be liberal in Walzer’s definition, and cosmopolitans – when they try to scrub out plurality – can be despotic. The premise is powerful, and the insights are as plentiful as they are valuable." [A Crash Course on Crises:]( [Macroeconomic Concepts for Run-Ups, Collapses, and Recoveries]( By Markus K. Brunnermeier and Ricardo Reis "As the title promises, this book summarizes the various forms of financial crises. Each digestible chapter discusses one type of crisis, using charts and language that should be easily accessible to any reader of business news. This is a must-read for analysts and policymakers." Don't miss our recent Say More interview with Mody, in which he traces the roots of the lack of accountability in India, highlights shortcomings in human capital and gender equality, casts doubt on the country’s ability to assume a Chinese-style role in manufacturing, and more. [Read now](. By a PS Contributor [Monetary Policy and Its Unintended Consequences]( By [Raghuram G. Rajan]( Rajan says: "In August 2005, I pointed to the perverse incentives for private players to take risks in a low interest-rate environment. It was no comfort to me when these risks materialized in the 2008 global financial crisis. But as central banks pursued yet more accommodative – and even unorthodox – policies to revive ailing economies, I worried that we were ignoring a primary cause of the crisis: central banks. They intervened merrily in a variety of markets, supporting prices and sometimes market players. They occasionally tied monetary-policy actions to market movements and sentiments. Somewhat perversely, the more the central bank did, the more it was expected to do, and the more it ended up doing. For instance, the mini banking crisis in March 2023 was alleviated by massive intervention by the US Federal Reserve and Treasury, including the effective insurance of all uninsured deposits, but this no longer seems to register as an aberration in the public consciousness. My central argument in this book is that monetary adventurism is rarely as much of a panacea as we think and often has unintended effects, which require yet more adventurism to address. The book is a plea to central bankers again to become more conservative and boring, and not to assume that they have all the solutions." [PS. Subscribe to PS Premium to secure your copy of PS Quarterly: Stayin’ Alive.]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [LinkedIn]( Project Syndicate publishes and provides, on a not-for-profit basis, original commentary by the world's leading thinkers to more than 500 media outlets in over 150 countries. This newsletter does not entitle the recipient to re-publish any of the content it contains. This newsletter is a service of [Project Syndicate](. [Change your newsletter preferences](. Follow us on [Facebook]( [Twitter]( and [YouTube](. © Project Syndicate, all rights reserved. [Unsubscribe from all newsletters](.