Risky business

Niall Ferguson, Joanna Potts

"Life is risky-which is why people buy insurance. But when disaster overwhelms conventional insurance systems, should the state step in? In this program, economics expert Niall Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to evaluate the free market's ability to help victims of the catastrophe. Ferguson then delves into one of the earliest insurance schemes, the Scottish Ministers' Widows Fund; the birth of the welfare state in post-WWII Japan as a measure against societal risks; and the invention of futures trading. The program also studies the role played by economist Milton Friedman in Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship and the investment of Chilean workers' pensions-another form of risk management.