Rishab Ghosh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > i think that's a naive and silly article based on the 'market cabal' > fallacy that's also popular to explain the high price of oil: it's > those fat cats that are secretly setting prices for X, buying jets > while robbing us poor honest folk.
The price of oil one was especially risible, since a large fraction of the problem was and still remains massive subsidies on oil consumption in places like China and Indonesia where the official price is not linked to the world market price, thus meaning vast numbers of "poor honest folk" have no incentive to reduce consumption when shortages occur. > while it's true that poor regulation helped this happen in the US - > poor regulation that allowed companies to act irresponsibly The GSEs (Freddie and Fannie) were a big part of the problem. They were created forty years ago to get a bunch of debt off the government books -- LBJ's accounting trick spawned a disaster. > i suppose this is the US's "safety net" though the european welfare > states do a better job of making it transparent, and providing > "safety" in a way that does not mainly reward irresponsibility... I'm not sure about that. In much of Europe, people have little incentive to take an "undignified" job if they can't find any other sort of work. Here in the US there is much more pressure in that direction. Perry -- Perry E. Metzger [EMAIL PROTECTED]
