Greenspan fails. Epically. We can be sure he was a pawn now.
October 24th, 2008 by doni
Greenspan fails. Epically. We can be sure he was a pawn now.
I’ve often felt the “rosey” painting presented by economists like Greenspan, one of an economy based on trust and perceived value that will magically regulate and fix itself in times of woe, was complete bullshit. To be honest, it’s excellent to see the markets fall so hard and fast. I know that the only way for a new system that MAKES SENSE and doesn’t screw people to arise is for the current one to fail. But wasn’t it so obviously destined to fail? Think about it! There are millions, billions, heck trillions of dollars flowing around that actually do not exist. The only thing that gives them value is a bunch of people agreeing that they have value and can be hedged upon financially.
So why did this crash happen? Markets start to fail, for a number of reasons like the sub prime mortgage scandal and just poor lending practices all over, and some people begin to sell their holdings to pay for debt they couldn’t afford in the first place. Then the market suffers and people begin to sell their holdings because they are losing money. Then another group of people start selling because if they don’t sell they are going to lose alot of money. THEN EVERYBODY SELLS and NOBODY BUYS. What do you have if the market contains only sellers? You’ve got no market at all.
It was funny, I was actually working for a financial firm as their designer before they fired me. One reason was because I wasn’t on board with the financial scene. I entered into debated with some of my coworkers, all of who heralded Greenspan as the prodigal financial son of our times. They all had the same quibble when it came to rebutting my comments: The markets will fix themselves. One coworker told me that if one part of the market fails or value is lost, another part will make up for it. He said that there was a time when flowers dominated the markets in Europe. What he fails to understand is that value is a controlled beast and always has been. Flowers (and other objects) had increased value throughout history because of the people who were directly or indirectly influencing their value. The example of flowers was ridiculous because the reason they had value was because some regal entity endorsed them as their favorite, so people wanting to associate themselves with that regality bought into the fad. Kind of like people bought into markets and derivitives at the advice of the financially successful Greenspan. “Holy shit, if Greenspan recommends it, and he’s in all the textbooks, dam sure I’m gonna buy in too”.
It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out. I think this time we canat least hope that more people will think critically about what is happening and not just think that this is the way things ought to be. Either way I’m staying tuned.
