If foreigners had asked us how to run an economy in the 1950’s or 1960’s we would have told them things like ‘Invest in R&D’ and ‘Do free trade’. We would not have told them ‘Find oil inside your borders and pump it as fast as you can’.

They probably don’t know why what they’re doing is working at the moment than we did.

The problems such forms have seem (to me at least) derived from the fact that they’re plugged into the same global free market as that of the U.S. And since the latter is much more de-regulated and un-policed than the former, they have to compete with dirty crooks like us, and are thereby forced to lower their standards.

Since I’m pretty uninformed, I would appreciate some of you to point out where I’m wrong.

Thanks

Yep, with our Birkenstocks in lockstep and our unwashed tresses flying.

Honestly, you’re just like a doctrinaire Marxist – “Marxism hasn’t failed because it’s never been tried properly yet!”

1. Create a moral hazard to “help people”.
2. Blame the market for the inevitable problems.
3. Use that to justify more of step one.

The Republican left has been in control for roughly 20 out of the last 30 years, not counting times they mostly controlled Congress but not the presidency. Too bad they didn’t do anything to reduce your moral hazard.

In the [less than] last year control over investment has shifted even more in to the hands of the few, the proud, the … very folks those doing keep saying are the last one who should be doing it. What do you call it when Government gets a larger direct control of investment?

1. Create a moral hazard to “help people”.
2. Blame the market for the inevitable problems.
3. Use that to justify more of step one.

Well they can protect big investors from their own mistakes by socialising the risks, obviously.

That’s one great advantage over a free market.

The Scandinavian banking meltdown is instructive – they let the banks go down, and damn the investors. Instead, they protected the tax payers.

Funny how the democratic socialist countries let the market correction happen, while the country that trumpets it’s free market credentials ad nauseum makes, at the bitter end, the biggest market intervention in history.

http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2008/09/lehman-to-announce-expected-results.html

Another dangling shoe drops. Any thoughts on Citigroup?

I recommend another look at “The Bubble Man“.

Lifted the federal government’s prohibition on the prosecution of mortgage lenders for fraud over the last few years. Not that difficult.

Bye.