Sabri wrote: > Here are some random thoughts:
I don't remember this posting on my Gmane RSS feeds page (http://rss.gmane.org/messages/complete/gmane.science.economics.progressive-economists). I remember the before and after posts. By looking at the archives here (http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/index.htm), I wonder if some postings may be unfed via Gmane RSS. Is this happening to others? Re. the substance of Sabri's posting, I'll just add that both, the critics of Bernanke (e.g. FT's Martin Wolf) and his defenders (e.g. WSJ's Greg Ip), write as if it were self evident where exactly the line dividing the effects on (1) a few fools who made the wrong bets and (2) the innocent "real economy" are. They do not know for sure. Is finance skin deep? Well, if the touted deepening and globalization of finance that media, academia, and think tanks have advertised has advanced as much as they say, then the mingling between (1) and (2) may be much deeper and complex than the columnists would want us believe. In his recent column, Krugman suggested that the uninsured creditors that got the ball rolling behaved as unregulated bank substitutes. Not only how much but *how* specifically did they substitute the banks in business and personal financing in the last few years? Looking at the data and doing some guessing to determine where this line (or something like a line) may lay is a key item in the Jackson Hole agenda. This reminds me of the proverbial beautiful person (any gender is fine here) who wanted to be loved not for her/his looks, but only for her/his brains. Nobody could prove true love to her/his satisfaction and she/he always felt unloved.
