The notion that the world can just regulate its way out of crises is thus an illusion. Rather, crisis is the price of innovation, so governments face a choice. They can embrace new financial ideas by keeping markets open. Regulation will be light, but there will be busts. The state will sometimes have to clear up and regulation must be about cure as well as prevention. Or governments can aim for safety and opt for dumbed-down financial systems that hobble their economies and deprive their people of the benefits of faster growth. And even then a crisis may strike.
And thus the conclusion: financiers are smarter than governments, thus they will inevitably find devious ways to crash the economy (after making loads of money in the process, of course, a just reward for their "creativity" and "innovation"), thus crises are inevitable. Apparently this applies even if you stunt the financial sector and tolerate to grow slowly (an assertion that is, of course, nowhere backed by facts, and even contradicted by earlier paragraphs of that very article). So one might as well have fast growth in-between, right? And, conveniently, governments should still be there in the bad times to pick up the pieces.
From the financiers, this makes sense:
- they gorge during the boom, and are celebrated for their smarts and innovation when what they are really doing is finding legal ways to loot and rape the rest of us;
- they are helped during the bust (sorry, the stumble), as that is a tolerable price to have bigger booms the rest of the time;
- they are right and deserve all of this because they are rich. That wealth has to mean something.
But for everybody else? Oh... they might be rich one day, so being stuffed in the meantime is an acceptable price, I suppose. Even if they are actually trampled upon after the 'stumble.'
crossposted from dailykos.com
