Booms and Busts
Oh, how I wish this post was about mast-spars and boobs. But no. It's about the economy.
Robert Samuelson here has a sober article asserting that the excessive risk-taking that led to the recent troubles seemed reasonable at the time because of the historically unprecedented boom that preceded it. The government, the theory goes, was so good at preventing small downturns that everyone began to think that nothing bad could ever happen. That belief made anybody who wasn't leveraged to the hilt look like a fool.
I remember the conversations: "The stock market isn't safe, it's way over historical norms." "Yeah, but you were saying that last year, and if you'd put your money in then, you'd be rich by now!"
And so the longest boom in history finally led to a pretty big bust.
Samuelson's prescription:
The quest for ever-more and ever-better prosperity subverts itself. It might be better to tolerate more frequent, milder recessions and financial setbacks than to strive for a sustained prosperity that, though superficially more appealing, is unattainable and ends in a devastating bust. That's a central implication of the crisis, but it poses hard political and economic questions that haven't yet been asked, let alone answered.
Ooh, ooh! I'll answer: Even in boom times, act like it's real money that you're playing with. What goes up must come down, and the more that we forget that, the further it'll fall when gravity takes over.
Robert Samuelson here has a sober article asserting that the excessive risk-taking that led to the recent troubles seemed reasonable at the time because of the historically unprecedented boom that preceded it. The government, the theory goes, was so good at preventing small downturns that everyone began to think that nothing bad could ever happen. That belief made anybody who wasn't leveraged to the hilt look like a fool.
I remember the conversations: "The stock market isn't safe, it's way over historical norms." "Yeah, but you were saying that last year, and if you'd put your money in then, you'd be rich by now!"
And so the longest boom in history finally led to a pretty big bust.
Samuelson's prescription:
The quest for ever-more and ever-better prosperity subverts itself. It might be better to tolerate more frequent, milder recessions and financial setbacks than to strive for a sustained prosperity that, though superficially more appealing, is unattainable and ends in a devastating bust. That's a central implication of the crisis, but it poses hard political and economic questions that haven't yet been asked, let alone answered.
Ooh, ooh! I'll answer: Even in boom times, act like it's real money that you're playing with. What goes up must come down, and the more that we forget that, the further it'll fall when gravity takes over.