I’ve had to lash myself to the mast to avoid linking to every post Megan McArdle has written on the financial crisis, but this time I can’t help myself. Read this excellent post if you, like me, are made queasy by the prevailing ‘greedy bankers’ narrative but have been struggling to explain why.
Archive for November, 2008
Not many sensible people waste energy worrying about the possibility of theocratic takeover in a major western democracy. We have a general optimism in the rationality and intellectual honesty of the people around us and at least some confidence in that of our political representatives. Keep this in mind as you read these three quotes on the subject of the financial crisis.
I am told ‘We don’t know who is responsible.’ Oh yeah? Well let me tell you that when things were going well, we knew who got bonuses. What a strange system…a crazy system which has been our system for years.
(“I don’t understand this science business, and I don’t understand what it’s done for me, but those scientists have been getting rich off it for years, and I can understand that.”)
The idea of the absolute power of the markets that should not be constrained by any rule, by any political intervention, was a mad idea. The idea that markets are always right was a mad idea.
(Straw man; US Financial regulation.)
You guys here in Australia haven’t been hit so hard. It’s because you have more regulation.
- American immigrant I overheard in Sydney
(“The lightening hit my place, but not yours. It must be because you have that lock on your front door. I hear those increase your security. You obviously knew what was coming.” See this excellent post from Megan McArdle.)
I’m not concerned that theocracy is imminent, but we’re not as safe from our own idiocy as we think.
