On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 7:39 PM, Rceeberger<[email protected]> wrote:
> If GM and Chrysler had gone out of business there would have been a wave of > unemployment like we have never seen in our lifetime. There would have been > no one to pick up all those unemployed in the short to medium term. Or not. The system is much too complex to make these kind of off-the-cuff predictions. Most people are not even aware of the numbers involved. When the monthly employment net change numbers come out, and there is a change of +200K or -120K or whatever, the actual number of people who were hired in a new job or lost a job are much higher, in the millions. Compare gross jobs gained or lost in a quarter (often around 10million) to the number of people employed by GM or Chrysler. Then look at gross jobs for a year. People change jobs in the millions all the time. A complex economy like the US has a large churn rate, and it is nearly impossible to predict exactly what jobs will be created and destroyed even 1 year ahead. > If Goldman and several other of the troubled financials had gone under, there > would have been such a hole in the overnight paper market that the entire > economy would have locked up AGAIN, like it did last September only this time > it would have been for a significant length of time rather than just 4 hours. Or not. There millions of knowledgeable and skilled people in this country. Likely most of them would have found ways to keep going with things important to them. Many solutions would have been tried, and the bad ones would tend to fail while the good ones pick up steam. Eventually, you end up with a better system through this sort of creative destruction. Unless the politicians bail out their cronies and keep patching the old system up until it fails again. _______________________________________________ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
