Nasar: Fisher, the Crash and an ‘Economics of the Whole
For Yale’s Irving Fisher, inventor of the Rolodex and America’s economic oracle, the madness of World War I was epitomized by his daughter Margaret’s descent into insanity after her fiancé was drafted. When a bizarre surgery touted as a miracle cure killed her, Fisher saw Margaret as another of the war’s senseless casualties, and rededicated himself to finding remedies for the nation’s economic and other ills.
Fisher was convinced that the loss of so many lives and the blighting of so many more would lead to a greater public commitment to protecting and extending life. He co-authored a guide to healthy living, “How to Live,” that sold 15 million copies. He championed the cause of “national vitality” by promoting, among other causes, the League of Nations, Prohibition, eugenics, environmental conservation, limits on immigration, civil rights for African Americans and, notably, national health insurance.
But perhaps his most lasting contribution to the nation’s vitality was his role in the development of an “economics of the whole,” or macroeconomics.
‘The Living Age’
Trained in mathematics and natural sciences during the Progressive Era, the Connecticut Yankee and preacher’s son had gravitated to economics out of a desire for “more contact with the living age.” Initially inclined to believe that all attempts to interfere in markets did more harm than good, Fisher lost his faith in strict laissez faire in the course of a successful battle with tuberculosis, the disease that had killed his father. Overcoming TB convinced him that nations as well as individuals need no longer let nature take its course. When markets failed, as they did in financial panics, intervention might improve the outcome.
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