23

Nov

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

Posted by   Published in Economics

So you’ve been worried about GM’s financial outlook, eh? That GM bailout got you down?

Well, how about GE?

Share on TwitterPin it on PinterestShare on TumblrSubmit to StumbleUponSave on DeliciousDigg ThisSubmit to redditShare via email

Related Articles

10 users responded in this post

Subscribe to this post comment rss or trackback url
mygif
SilverMoonWolf said on November 23rd, 2008 at 10:42 pm

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

ReplyReply
mygif
Brian G said on November 23rd, 2008 at 11:51 pm

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

ReplyReply
mygif
Canadave said on November 24th, 2008 at 12:29 am

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

ReplyReply
mygif
BlackBloc said on November 24th, 2008 at 1:26 am

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?

ReplyReply
mygif
Master Mahan said on November 24th, 2008 at 2:22 am

Wow, and I thought 30 Rock was just joking.

ReplyReply
mygif
ps238principal said on November 24th, 2008 at 4:07 am

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.

ReplyReply
mygif
Bitsy said on November 24th, 2008 at 10:13 am

Well, there goes my job. :/

ReplyReply
mygif
DistantFred said on November 24th, 2008 at 7:26 pm

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).

ReplyReply
mygif
ps238principal said on November 24th, 2008 at 9:54 pm

@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.

ReplyReply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Please Note: Comment moderation may be active so there is no need to resubmit your comments