Alan Greenspan admitted that while he never saw a government regulation of the market he liked BEFORE the recent market crash, when quivering in the hot seat of Congressional hearings, he called for more government regulation of the market.
“According to the Holy Canon of the True Faith of the Unimpeded Free Market, if people are allowed to individually pursue what they regard as their own enlightened self interest, their collective behavior will result in a general state of robust, healthy economic equilibrium overall. The market is by definition perfect.” --Mary Sykes Wylie, July/August 2009 Psychotherapy Networker, p. 47.
Are you ready for your Faith conversion? Or have you converted already?
Lots of differing opinions about the market. They are probably all correct in one way or another and depending on what perspective you take.
But seriously, what’s the government got to do with any of it? The G have a hard enough time making the everyday lives of everyday people better, without then putting their hands into something they surely have no understand whatsoever about. It’s interesting that people want this regulated or that regulated, but sometimes miss the part about saying in what way and how it could possibly be fair or logical.
The whole financial crisis etc is a problem for plenty of people. The market is there to be profited from as much as possible. The people who are suffering because the market does what the market does are people who have let everyone else manage their money and future for them without educating themselves and understanding what risks are being taken and how that impacts them and what they could do themselves to minimise their individual risk. If they took control they could potentially take over completely and do so much better (or worse).
One person managing their own money in the market can make a complete killing if they are skilled enough no matter which direction the market they choose to participate in moves, whereas funds have so much more money to shift around that every move they make causes consequences one way or another and so they are limited in what they can potentially do and so their potential to profit is severely limited compared to that of a lone person. So it’s no surprise that peoples retirements are getting ruined simply because the market has changed direction and all their money is pooled with thousands / millions of other peoples and the small profit they previously made is now going south. Profit is not real until you finally have that cash in your sweaty hands, until then it’s only potential profit… and potential profit can grow or shrink (and even become debt).
It’s the nature of the beast. The market does what it does. You either profit from it or you get eaten by the sharks. What is the government going to do? Make it illegal for the market to lose them money? How does that work? What about the forex market? For that to be the case the currency would have to only ever travel in one direction, or only one direction at set times, etc. That’s then not a market. You can’t force your own currency to move a certain direction against an opposing countries currency when both yours and the other country’s currency are being affected by the supply and demand of other 3rd party countries!
I must have completely missed something so please someone fill me in. But what can the government do that is remotely reasonable, fair, logical, whatever? What does the government regulate next?
I didn’t read the whole thing but skimmed it and saw lots of words and no substance. Perhaps I just don’t care enough for it to have meaning to me.
what i did notice is that it’s not actually anything to do with the market and actually all about tying the banks hands behind their back, and not letting them run their business the way they want to. Seems totally fair (not). Well it doesn’t matter how many restrictions you put in place people will always find a way to screw themselves. You can baby-proof a house and put soft edges on every corner and so on and so forth, but some moron will still manage to find the one thing they could ever possibly hurt themselves on and indeed then hurt themselves.
Put someone in a straight jacket inside a padded room and they will still manage to mangle themselves if that’s what they wish to do. You can’t protect people from themselves completely. The more you restrict bank fees and lending practices etc, the more creative I expect people will be in finding new ways to financially cripple themselves. It’s just how people are.
The flip-side of that is that no matter how many restrictions you put in place businesses will find a way to screw YOU over if that’s what they want to do.
The more control people want on things the less control they’ll get. You squeeze the soap too tight and it will simply jump out of your hand. The more you try to save people from themselves the less responsibility they will take for themselves. Take away peoples ability to fail, and you take away their ability to succeed.
please. plenty of people call aus “usa 2.0”. plus we get exactly this type of crap here too. generally it’s the voices of morons drowning out the voices of the more learned. when you have more retards than geniuses, then all you can do is take care of yourself and let the rest wipe themselves out.
problem with democracy is any idiot gets a chance to speak, and when there’s more idiots than non-idiots… fail.
um, if i understand “converted along with Greenspan” to mean let the government stick their grubby hands into things they know nothing about and make things worse… then i thought my stance was obviously no?
but i have again probably missed something and misunderstand.
It’s ggod that you are your own High Priest. We should put you in charge and let the banks continue to fall and fail while their CEOs run off with $million bonuses for doing a bad job! Would you give me a bonus for ruining everything? I’ll come work for YOU! Great idea! I am with you on that !
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Tuesday that the global recession will “surely be the longest and deepest” since the 1930s, adding that the Obama administration’s Troubled Asset Relief Program will be insufficient to plug the yawning financial gap.
“Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September, we have been exposed to the most rapid and unremitting set of gloomy statistics that I have ever seen,” the former Fed chairman said a meeting of the Economic Club of New York, according to Politico.
Greenspan later tagged the current crisis a “once-in-a-century type event.”
The move was an about-face for the free-market economist.
While Greenspan steered clear of his role in the market collapse, “he did take a new swipe at the market’s self-correcting tendencies and bowed his head to a new period of increased regulation,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
i just can’t really get interested. there’s nothing but clowns in the media. they’ll say whatever they think sounds interesting. whether what they say is meaningful in any context is beside the point as long as they sound like they have expertise and have something interesting to bamboozle the unknowing with.
Greenspan is not a free market economist. We do not live in a free market. We live in an interventionist market. Is a central authority setting interest rates and controlling the monetary system a free market? No. The free market did not fail, because it was not a free market. The interventionist market failed… and our masters seem to think that more intervention is the solution to the problems caused by the earlier interventions. History has shown that intervention will only make things worse.
Just to assess your flexibility, I’m wondering if you’re capable of acknowledging that Greenspan’s moved toward supporting MORE regulation, when throughout his tenure he held a position in support of LESS regulation.
Yes and I am not alone. There are millions of people that are hungry right now and the 2% richest people in the world are having a ball and just making the biggest profit in their lifetime while people still discuss if this free market process or that one is good or bad.
Until people open their eyes and realize that private banking can’t or should not control the world the problem will continue and the top 2% will just keep getting richer and richer.
What can the countries do? Very simple; Cut this bullshit bankers out and start building national banks to finance their people and send all of these ponzy scheme people out of business. Bring production home and stop giving these rich idiots more tax breaks to run their businesses exploiting other countries cheap labor.
Don’t you people realize that the problem are the bankers that now own whole countries and do as they which and want with the countries and their politicians.
Currently, all banks in the US, and most other countries are national banks. Check out their official names, where they designate they are national banks (NA, in the US). All operate under the national central banks. Did the very few private banks in this world cause the current economic crisis, or is it the manipulation of money supply, interest rates, etc. that caused this crisis?
If banks were private, they could fail, if banks can fail, then banks will be more prudent with their loans and everything else. If they are more prudent, we would not have all the recklessness.
Oh, and the largest ponzi schemes in existence are government programs. yes, they should not exist.
Wait a sec, I thought you were calling for national banks? You’re confusing.
It’s not that I am converted is that I never believed nor did I have faith in having organizations that are private and totally corrupt run countries and politicians and worst of all print money out of thin air. An example the Federal Reserve and it’s total control of Washington. Unfortunately attempts made by previous presidents one of the more recent ones John F. Kennedy to take control of printing money have never succeded.
Just read this Jefferson Quote:
If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
Does this ring a bell?
I just hope people wake up and start reading between the lines. All this capitalism media circus has been really bad for the world as a whole.
