Comments on: You Have To Laugh (Or You’ll Jump Off A Bridge)

By: ps238principal

ps238principal — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 01:54:44 +0000

@DistantFred: Let me clairify a bit. A lot of “invisible hand” proponents state that markets will naturally weed out poor businesses in favor of more efficient ones, and that this will be done by a well-informed market making choices based on the good results and/or bad acts of those involved. What this fails to take into account is when the market isn’t informed at all due to deception on the part of nearly all of the actors involved. Further, when this happens (as it’s happening now), the entire market may collapse and take a lot of people with it. If simple regulations had been enforced (like maintaining sane debt-to-asset ratios) along with more transparency of bookkeeping and less rating by unbiased/unowned agencies, then any bad acts might have not spread so far through the economy.

It’s like saying that if we just stopped enforcing speed limits, it would remove drivers from the road that couldn’t handle steering at high speeds.

By: DistantFred

DistantFred — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:26:00 +0000

ps238principal: I think we’re at, right now, the point in economic theory when the Invisible Hand of the Market has formed itself into a fist and has begun wrecking all the poorly managed businesses, to make way for less inept ones. I’m not an economist mind you, but I think they believe this is a good thing (hence all the anti-bailout spiels).

By: Bitsy

Bitsy — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:13:11 +0000

Well, there goes my job. :/

By: ps238principal

ps238principal — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:07:47 +0000

This is kind of what gets me about the whole “invisible hand of the market” philosophy: It doesn’t appear to take into account what happens when everyone lies to each other about their assets and debts for an extended period of time until the whole house of cards collapses.

By: drjon

drjon — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 07:32:49 +0000

Incidentally...

By: Master Mahan

Master Mahan — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 06:22:09 +0000

Wow, and I thought 30 Rock was just joking.

By: BlackBloc

BlackBloc — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 05:26:44 +0000

Geez, it’s almost like a period of unsustainable growth suddenly resulted in a global collapse. Why couldn’t anyone, certainly not a German and/or Jewish economist, predict this would happen?

By: Canadave

Canadave — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:29:32 +0000

Fuck. They’re a major industry in my hometown.

By: Brian G

Brian G — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 03:51:53 +0000

There’s always the Devon Banks solution: Sell the “E” to Samsung. (Now they’re Samesung!)

By: SilverMoonWolf

SilverMoonWolf — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 02:42:26 +0000

That’s a shocker considering how much the government pays them for their death machines.