NY Times, April 3, 2002 TV REVIEW | 'COMMANDING HEIGHTS' Charting the Mysteries of World Markets
By NEIL GENZLINGER The idea of watching a six-hour documentary on the history of the global economy probably fills a lot of people with terror. And there is certainly terror to be found in "Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy," which arrives tonight on PBS in the first of three two-hour installments. The fear factor here, however, does not involve gruesome death by boredom, though there is sluggishness aplenty in the six hours. Rather, viewers who come to the program feeling they don't understand how the new economy works may end up with the horrifying suspicion that the world's best economists don't either. "Commanding Heights" is based on the book of the same name by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, which was first published in 1998. Their work has been updated here, somewhat fitfully, to try to account for Sept. 11, the economic sputtering that had begun even before the attacks, and so on. But it is hard to escape the feeling that the program would have had a more authentic ring two years ago, when production began. Today it sometimes calls to mind those scientists who desperately try to shape data to fit a pet theory, rather than search for a theory consistent with the data. Part 1, "The Battle of Ideas," the most engaging segment, lays the historical foundation, portraying economics as a continuing battle between the views of John Maynard Keynes and those of Friedrich August von Hayek. [This is consistent with PBS's narrow-spectrum programming.] It follows these men and their schools of thought through the 20th century, Keynesians dominating for most of that time with the idea that the government should manipulate the economy. Hayek and his views that markets should reign came to the forefront only after the phenomenon known as stagflation — inflation and high unemployment at the same time — left the Keynesians scratching their heads. The Hayek forces emerged triumphant when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher gained office simultaneously. Free-market theories started to be turned into practice. "You had Reagan and Thatcher at the same time, two what I call idea politicians," George P. Shultz, the former secretary of state, points out. "They had ideas, they were convinced they were the right ideas, and they put them into effect." full: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/03/arts/television/03GENZ.html Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
