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The Spectator Podcast: The crash we need

On this week’s episode, we ask whether there’s such thing as a good financial crash. We also look at the reality of the housing crisis and the ethics of dwarfs in the entertainment industry.

First, with the Dow Jones taking a tumble at the end of last week, market watchers were on high alert for signs of another financial crash. In this week’s magazineLiam Halligan looks at the state of the stock market and asks: could a coming crisis could spell the end of the easy-money era? He joined the podcast to look at the behaviour of global markets at a volatile moment, along with economist and author, George Magnus. As Liam writes:

“This was not really a crash: markets worldwide are still far higher than they were two months ago. The dip on Tuesday was as nothing compared with Black Monday in 1987, when the Dow lost a quarter of its value in a few days. And the market is not a barometer of the economy. There was no banking collapse, no terrorist-driven panic, no geopolitical disaster. This was a good old-fashioned market–driven change in valuations, after a bull run. In fact, it may well be that the world economy is finally moving on from the 2008 crisis, escaping the doldrums of its long aftermath.”

Next, there has been much discussion since the 2017 election of whether a fix to Britain’s housing crisis might help the Conservatives stem the tide of Corbynism. We may have a housing crisis, says Matthew Parris in his column this week, but we don’t have a housing shortage. He joined podcast to discuss the fixes required to the system, along with our political editor, James Forsyth. As Matthew writes:

“I’m no economist. My understanding of the dismal science is rudimentary. I may be shot down in flames as an ignoramus.

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