Unchecked and Unbalanced: How the Discrepancy Between Knowledge and Power Caused the Financial Crisis and Threatens Democracy

by Arnold Kling

In Unchecked and Unbalanced , Arnold Kling provides a blueprint for those who are skeptical of political and financial elitism. At the heart of Kling's argument is the growing discrepancy between two knowledge is becoming more diffuse, while political power is becoming more concentrated.

Kling sees this knowledge/power discrepancy at the heart of the financial crisis of 2008. Financial industry executives and regulatory officials lacked the ability to fathom the complexity of the system that had emerged. And, in response, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke, said that they required still more power, including $700 billion to purchase "toxic assets" from banks.

Kling warns that increased concentration of power is a problem, not a panacea, for our modern world and suggests reforms designed to curb the growth of government and allow citizens greater control over the allocation of public goods.

Published in cooperation with the Hoover Institution

Genres: Economics

136 pages, Hardcover

First published November 16, 2009

About the author

American economist, scholar, and blogger. He is an Adjunct Scholar for the Cato Institute and a member of the Financial Markets Working Group at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He teaches statistics and economics at the Berman Hebrew Academy in Rockville, Maryland.
Kling received his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980. He was an economist on the staff of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 1980-1986. He was a senior economist at Freddie Mac from 1986-1994.

Reviews

[John Seymour · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kling suggests, following Friedrich Hayek, that an imbalance between concentrated power and diffused knowledge leads to policies failing to achieve goals with unexpected consequences and inexorably leading to tyranny. Kling applies his theory through an analysis of the 2008 financial crisis, not so much assigning blame as seeking to see where people were making decisions within their power, but well outside of their competence because they did not have (and could not have had) the information they needed to make good decisions. An interesting analysis, but Kling then moves on to a typically libertarian grab bag of solutions that, it seems to me, have little chance of being adopted short of revolution because they require reductions in power by people whose whole being is consumed with the acquisition of power. Voluntary surrender of power is so rare that King George III, when told that a victorious Washington planned to surrender his commission and return to his farm said "If he does that he will be the greatest man in the world."

[Howard Olsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the sort of academic writing I like: short (just 116 pages), to the point, plus it might change your viewpoint on current events. Kling is writing about the financial crisis and the government's reaction. His basic theory is this: knowledge in the modern world has become increasingly specialized and de-centralized, while power has become increasingly centralized. As a society, we may be getting smarter, but our institutions have become dumber, even as they have become more powerful. Well done cold comfort.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

A straightforward book with a unique viewpoint. Its brevity adds to its value.