I'm not an economist, but I have studied their evil magicks. I would guess that conservative economists would say that this kind of turmoil is ok in the short term for the long-term benefit.
This is what comes of successive governments deciding that they can use the financial sector to drive the entire economy, rather than relying on boring things like industry. Smeg-heads.
Who told you that? The invisible hand guides the Marketplace to profit. That implies winners, which requires losers. "For the good of everyone" is not a capitalist idea: that's Communism.
Well, no one actor in an economy is sufficiently large or influential to fix, control or distort supply, demand or selling price, and all act in their own best interest, so prices tend towards an equitable postition where supply and demand intersect -- people pay what they want for goods and services and suppliers don't starve to death selling them to their customers. Simple! Adam Smith said so and he was a philosophy professor at Glasgow.
Of course, if circumstances ever developed where sectors of the economy colluded, rather than competed, things would become distorted immediately, and stay that way until someone else -- a sovereign body of some sort-- forcibly stopped them price fixing.
That's why Professor Smith observed that one duty of the State was to prevent collusion because (from memory), "merchants never come together but that the conversation turns into a conspiracy against the public interest."
Oh, and not trusting matters of importance (crude oil futures and derivatives, for instance) to coke-snorting refugees from Enron would probably help.
I could go on, but I've been shovelling gravel all day, so am a bit shagged out.
It is ... good ... for many people to be made redundant, for the global economy to be threatened with recession, for social (and, at present, housing-related) mobility to be crippled because this led to a very small number of people earning vast sums of money which they then spend, this wealth trickles through and down into the economy and improves the lot of pretty much everyone.
No, it doesn't make any more sense now than it did twenty years ago.
...basically, Steve, the invisible hand of the market squashes the weaklings, leaving the strongest to survive, which means the ones that are left are better. Hooray!
Comments
I know, it makes me sick to my stomach, too.
Marketplace to profit. That implies winners, which requires losers. "For the good of everyone" is not a capitalist idea: that's Communism.
Of course, if circumstances ever developed where sectors of the economy colluded, rather than competed, things would become distorted immediately, and stay that way until someone else -- a sovereign body of some sort-- forcibly stopped them price fixing.
That's why Professor Smith observed that one duty of the State was to prevent collusion because (from memory), "merchants never come together but that the conversation turns into a conspiracy against the public interest."
Oh, and not trusting matters of importance (crude oil futures and derivatives, for instance) to coke-snorting refugees from Enron would probably help.
I could go on, but I've been shovelling gravel all day, so am a bit shagged out.
No, it doesn't make any more sense now than it did twenty years ago.
Graham