Heiner Flassbeck Popular Books

Heiner Flassbeck Biography & Facts

Heiner Flassbeck (born 12 December 1950) is a German economist and public intellectual. From 1998 to 1999 he was a State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Finance (German: Bundesministerium der Finanzen) where he also advised former finance minister Oskar Lafontaine on a reform of the European Monetary System. He became the Chief of Macroeconomics and Development of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva in January 2003, a position that he held until resigning at the end of 2012 due to his age. Life Heiner Flassbeck studied economics at Saarland University (1971–1976). During that time he was assistant at chair of Wolfgang Stützel with emphasis on currency issues. Afterwards, up to 1980 he worked in the assistants staff of the German Council of Economic Experts. 1987 he received a doctors degree Dr. rer. pol. at the Free University of Berlin with his work: Prices, Interest and Currency Rate. On Theory of Open Economy at flexible Exchange Rates (German: Preise, Zins und Wechselkurs. Zur Theorie der offenen Volkswirtschaft bei flexiblen Wechselkursen). After he was operating at the Federal Ministry for Economy and Technology since 1980, he changed over to the German Institute for Economic Research (German: Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, DIW) in Berlin in 1986, where he worked on labour market- and business cycle analysis and concepts of economic policy. 1990 he became head of the department business cycle at the institute. When the government changed in October 1998 he was appointed State Secretary in the Ministry of Finance in the first Schröder cabinet. He counseled the former finance minister Oskar Lafontaine with his intent to establish together with French finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn a Keynesian fiscal policy and monetary policy on level of the European Union and to reform the international monetary system. After Oskar Lafontaine resigned from minister in March 1999, Flassbeck's work as a state secretary ended in April 1999 as well. That followed a period of working free lance as an economic researcher and a publicist. From November 2000 to December 2002 he worked as a senior economist at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). From January 2003 up to his service retirement he was the chief economist, Chief of Macroeconomics and Development of the UNCTAD, since August 2003 Director of Division on Globalization and Development Strategies. The Hamburg University of Economics and Politics appointed Flassbeck an honorary professor in March 2005. Positions on economic policy In his early scientific career, in the 1980s, Flassbeck in particular dealt with questions of foreign trade theory (an area of International economics) and monetary policy. In his work Free trade, GATT and the international currency system (German: Freihandel, GATT und das internationale Währungssystem. 1985) he offered an essay to redefine the benefits of free trade based on a new trade theory. In frame of a system of flexible currency rates a decision between protectionism and free trade could not be made and in addition the targeted national autonomy in monetary policy not be achieved. In his dissertation from 1988, Prices, Interest and Currency Rate, he spoke for "absolutely fixed currency rates" as only solution that could ensure an efficient and continuous adjustment of global economy and outer price stability. According to Flassbeck, the effects by revaluation and devaluation at flexible currency rates were equal to state interference at its discretion and as much exogenous as non-market driven changes in currency rate. Flassbeck explained his positions on economic policy together with economist Frederike Spiecker in their book The End of Mass Unemployment (German: Das Ende der Massenarbeitslosigkeit, 2007). He does not consider the reasons for the weak growth and mass unemployment of many years in Germany as a result of technological progress, globalization or too high wages, but as a consequence of a not demand-orientated policy. Flassbeck since then instead advocates an economic policy which follows basic Keynesian principles and claims a "reform of thinking". After the first worsening of the financial crisis since 2007 he published his book: Failed. Why politics surrenders to economy (German: Gescheitert. Warum die Politik vor der Wirtschaft kapituliert. March 2009). There he particularly highlights the omissions made by German economics policy during the German reunification and its recurrence at the European monetary union. He put the economic crisis down to a structure-conservative policy which focused on individual economic (microeconomic) particular interests, with what the market economy in the end was questioned. In September 2010 Flassbecks book The Market Economy of the 21st Century (German: Die Marktwirtschaft des 21. Jahrhunderts) was released: shocks and crisis were the normality in a market economy system, periods of stability the exceptional case. It needed an international monetary system like it already rudimentarily had existed in the early postwar period with the Bretton Woods system. In the new market economy of the 21st century, for every problem solutions should open-ended be searched for, which either could be borne by market or by state. Interests, exchange rates and prices for natural resources would clearly belong to state price control on international level. Already in a system of decontrolled financial markets as existent since beginning of the 1980s, the price formation by way of supply and demand was suspended — so that a market in the classical meaning had not been existent there. Flassbecks latest publication, the Ten Myths of Crisis (German: Zehn Mythen der Krise. 2012), predominantly contains a political evaluation of the finance- and eurozone crisis, as well as the estimation that the economic "Aufklärung" could be achieved not until a future expectable new crisis happens. Saving and investment Flassbeck assigns a major role to the insight that a national economy cannot save: the common understanding that a national economy could gain net savings, thus saving money during a certain period of time to finance investment in a future period using saved money, was false. This thinking by Flassbeck follows the results of Balances Mechanics developed by German economist Wolfgang Stützel. Saving of one economic unit currently inevitably led to revenue loss of another unit. At present somebody in the economy was stuck with his supply. Expenses which are not done would fall away in same height. Because the sum of revenues, with that the incomes, of all economic units equals the sum of all expenses and with that the overall demand of all economic units, incomes would decline in future. The income generated in one period was to be used "always". By analogy with "time saving", which cannot be saved, saving in terms of not-using could not exist in an economy. Today's .... Discover the Heiner Flassbeck popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Heiner Flassbeck books.