On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 8:41 AM, Nick Arnett<[email protected]> wrote:
> Only in the general sense. Which is what was under discussion. If a significant part of a building is on fire (i.e., not just a fireplace or whatever), it is not likely that anyone able to explore the building will miss the fact that the building is on fire, and people could predict with good accuracy whether that fire is likely to go out without intervention. It is absurd to compare a burning building to the US economy. On one hand, you have the economy where even someone as distinguished as Ben Bernanke has repeatedly failed to predict fundamental concepts such as whether a disaster was imminent or whether smooth sailing was ahead. On the other hand, you have a burning building, where firefighters (and most anyone who is able to look around the building, for that matter) knows that the building is burning and has some idea of what will happen if there is no intervention. With the burning building, it is extremely unlikely that a horde of people will individually, or as a group, study the situation, form plans each using their own specialized knowledge of the situation, and proceed to solve the problem of the burning building, a little bit at a time. But in a large economy like in the US, this is exactly what has been happening every day, for decades. _______________________________________________ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
