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> The government creates bubble after bubble You can't make a statement like this and use it as a premise for something else and not expect to have to defend i

> The government creates bubble after bubble You can't make a statement like this and use it as a premise for something else and not expect to have to defend it as a statement unto itself. Given this is an extreme position you're going to have to have an extremely good argument for it for anyone to take it seriously. But assuming that the government does cause all "bubbles", why is it understandable that during such times market participants should start behaving irrationally, against their own best interests? Markets can solve anything, except bubbles caused by the government?

001sky 13y ago
This is trivial. Not sure anyone needs to debate it. Latin american debt crisis. Peso crisis. Asian currency crisis. Russian currency crisis. Nasdaq bubble. Telecom bubble. Housing bubble. And current "QEx" bubble accross all asset classes from farmland, to Gold, to Art to Bitcoins, to London Real Estate ... {etc WTF?}. Markets need regulation, rules, and governing oversight. Without those, they are crap. Without those and mypoic distortion they are even worse. The problem is that there is money to be made from advising the government to "intervene" and its a good business model. 1/3 of the us economy is spent by politically motivated non-market entities. But the real damage is done by corrupted financial markets, another large proportion of the GDP. Just look where the money is going. As the suburbs of Washington overtake New York as the highest income counties in the US. There shouldn't be a question at all: A nexus of crony capitalism has emerged in the past 12-15 years.
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  I'm not sure I get this? This seems to be "Governments control outsized amounts of cash and make bad decisions, for which well financed private markets exploit their bad positions sucking at the tax money and eventually a crisis occurs ending the situation till another political arbitrage occurs." it's just that a lot of the crises listed are to me less "political corruption and collusion with financiers and more the road to hell being paved with good intentions. ending political corruption is feasible, ending good intentions?
  - marcosdumay 13y ago
    Try something like "Government has outsized power to change economical outcomes, and punishes sustainable decisions hard, making any rational person choose the viable unsustainable ones. People that make unsustainable decisions (everybody still in the game, as the government destroyed everybody else) can't sustain themselves for long, and routinely face deep crisis". I guess that's a bit longer, but more clear. Things would be less bad if just one unlucky event in a crisis wasn't enough to destroy the entire life of somebody, but it is, so we must play russian roulette every few years. Anyway, I'm quite sure reducing the government intervention will replace this problem with something worse (that we can check on history books), thus the solution has to come from some other kind of change.
  - crusso 13y ago
    ending political corruption is feasible Wow, I'm not really sure what to say to that unless you mean that you can end political corruption by destroying the power base of government so that taking advantage of government doesn't mean much. My Homeowners' Association doesn't really have any significant corruption, but that's really just because they don't have much power or money to control. Whenever you concentrate large amounts of power, you will have corruption. That is as axiomatic as any part of life on Earth.

001sky 13y ago

This is trivial. Not sure anyone needs to debate it. Latin american debt crisis. Peso crisis. Asian currency crisis. Russian currency crisis. Nasdaq bubble. Telecom bubble. Housing bubble. And current "QEx" bubble accross all asset classes from farmland, to Gold, to Art to Bitcoins, to London Real Estate ... {etc WTF?}. Markets need regulation, rules, and governing oversight. Without those, they are crap. Without those and mypoic distortion they are even worse. The problem is that there is money to be made from advising the government to "intervene" and its a good business model. 1/3 of the us economy is spent by politically motivated non-market entities. But the real damage is done by corrupted financial markets, another large proportion of the GDP. Just look where the money is going. As the suburbs of Washington overtake New York as the highest income counties in the US. There shouldn't be a question at all: A nexus of crony capitalism has emerged in the past 12-15 years.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago
I'm not sure I get this? This seems to be "Governments control outsized amounts of cash and make bad decisions, for which well financed private markets exploit their bad positions sucking at the tax money and eventually a crisis occurs ending the situation till another political arbitrage occurs." it's just that a lot of the crises listed are to me less "political corruption and collusion with financiers and more the road to hell being paved with good intentions. ending political corruption is feasible, ending good intentions?
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  Try something like "Government has outsized power to change economical outcomes, and punishes sustainable decisions hard, making any rational person choose the viable unsustainable ones. People that make unsustainable decisions (everybody still in the game, as the government destroyed everybody else) can't sustain themselves for long, and routinely face deep crisis". I guess that's a bit longer, but more clear. Things would be less bad if just one unlucky event in a crisis wasn't enough to destroy the entire life of somebody, but it is, so we must play russian roulette every few years. Anyway, I'm quite sure reducing the government intervention will replace this problem with something worse (that we can check on history books), thus the solution has to come from some other kind of change.
- crusso 13y ago
  ending political corruption is feasible Wow, I'm not really sure what to say to that unless you mean that you can end political corruption by destroying the power base of government so that taking advantage of government doesn't mean much. My Homeowners' Association doesn't really have any significant corruption, but that's really just because they don't have much power or money to control. Whenever you concentrate large amounts of power, you will have corruption. That is as axiomatic as any part of life on Earth.