On Mar 8, 2009, at 9:13 PM, Michael Smith wrote:
> On Sun, 8 Mar 2009 20:51:11 -0400
> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> quoted an interesting
> piece from one of the many Daily Diaries Of The Speculative
> Dream:
>
>> Financial Times - March 8, 2009
>> <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c6c5bd36-0c0c-11de-b87d-0000779fd2ac.html>
>
>> “Governments bad; deregulated markets good”: how can this faith
>> escape
>> unscathed after Alan Greenspan, pupil of Ayn Rand and predominant
>> central banker of the era, described himself, in congressional
>> testimony last October, as being “in a state of shocked disbelief”
>> over the failure of the “self-interest of lending institutions to
>> protect shareholders’ equity”?
>
> Isn't this what they do, every coupla generations or so?
Oh yeah. After we get through this they'll start up again, unless we stop them. That's the great flaw of crisis-o-philia: a problem, even a serious one, is taken as something truly transformative. It's probably not.
Financial crises, ponzi schemes, massive defaults - they've been an intimate part of American history from the beginning.
Doug