Carl Remick wrote:
>In that respect, I think the soft underbelly of the free-market
>position would be lack of transparency that contributed to the
>magnitude of the Enron collapse. But, Doug, you've seemed reluctant
>in the past to identify this as a key issue -- e.g., I recall your
>commen
Transparency is a big problem for free-marketeers.
It is clearly a constituent part of efficiency, but
its pursuit in the real world affronts corporations
and leads some conservatives to defend lack of transparency
as a property right. Asymmetric information is of course
a major topic for Stiglit
Carl Remick wrote:
>
>
> >
> >If you're going to fight an ideological opponent, you should have
> >some sense of what the opponent thinks.
> >
> >Doug
>
You fight an ideological opponent by striving to change the reality
which generates the ideology, which is the spontaneous reflection in
hu
>Max Sawicky wrote:
>
>>The mere fact of a company failing,
>>even a large one, is not a market failure.
>
>I'm away on an inter-holiday retreat, and only sporadically checking
>email, so someone else may have made this point already. No free
>marketeer would ever regard a big failure as an indict
Max Sawicky wrote:
>The mere fact of a company failing,
>even a large one, is not a market failure.
I'm away on an inter-holiday retreat, and only sporadically checking
email, so someone else may have made this point already. No free
marketeer would ever regard a big failure as an indictment o
Gene writes:
> Max, I read the big push to define the Enron affair as
> criminal as an effort to
> suggest that there is nothing wrong with the functioning of
> the market, just
> some bad apples who everybody thought were good apples...
Max writes:
> You could read it that way, but whether or
You could read it that way, but whether or not
the affair does point to an inherent problem with
markets is another matter. Choice and imperfect
law creation/enforcement make illegal acts possible;
that doesn't mean the underlying arrangement isn't
the best available.mbs
Max, I read the big
Max, I read the big push to define the Enron affair as criminal as an effort to
suggest that there is nothing wrong with the functioning of the market, just
some bad apples who everybody thought were good apples.
Which is not to say that pushing the criminal investigation high into the
Bush ad
I would say the relevant test in this context is whether
the product kept flowing to customers at prices that
covered production costs. The California crisis is
clearly an example of consumptis interruptis, but no
role of Enron's bankruptcy in that crisis has been
raised, as far as I know. So I
Max, nicely clear statement, isn't there another issue here? Enron supposedly
"proved" that market forces were superior to government regulation. It could
create low prices for consumers and lush profits for investors.
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico,
Two different issues seem to be mixed in here.
One is market failure, the other is illegal acts by
Enron execs possibly linked to illegal acts by
the Bushies. The mere fact of a company failing,
even a large one, is not a market failure. Market
failures exist because markets keep functioning
in
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