Chinese Walls

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Fri Aug 16 13:21:09 PDT 2002


Joe Stiglitz and Doug talk in their intereview about how the financial industry assured everyone that nothing bad would happen by overthrowing Glass-Steagal because they would erect Chinese Walls. And of course both noted that these walls turned out to be pretty damned porous.

And it just suddenly struck me -- why would anyone think "Chinese Wall" was a great name for an impermeable barrier? Most of the dynasties that ruled China for the last 2000 years were barbarians from the north who made it through. The most famous historian/theorist of the Great Wall and the role it played in Chinese History, Owen Lattimore, once famously described it as "not so much a barrier as a membrane."

Michael



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