On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 10:19 AM, John Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
> > > For those among us who oppose government regulation, does this include > > opposition to regulation whose purpose is to limit complexity? (Which > I'm > > thinking would also help avoid chaotic -- in the mathematical sense -- > > behavior in the markets.) > > I don't follow how you go from nobody understanding to the government > somehow > being able to help. If nobody understands, surely that includes > politicians? > Maybe you are saying that the government can somehow make things > understandable by reducing chaos? I find that an even bigger leap of faith. Yes, to the latter. I'm not talking about solving the current problem, but what could be done in the future to help prevent such a problem. It seems to me that the freedom to create extremely complex financial instruments enabled the present mess to happen. The idea is to avoid creating things we don't understand. As for solving the present problem, I sure don't know. I particularly like your idea of looking at price to rental ratios. They're nutty here in Silicon Valley. Anybody who bought in recent years has zero hope of coming even close to being cash-flow positive... but we also have Prop. 11 to make things weird. We're paying 20x what the previous owners paid in property taxes. Nick _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
