First of all, all this glass-is-half-empty talk in the media around the current economic downturn is just a license to be negative & indulge in dark notions. There. Now that’s out of the way I can get on with the reason we’re here.
A free, unfettered market fails in saving man from himself. Human greed is overwhelming, deep seeded & cannot be overcome (as a species). Corporations in general are headless, heartless & spiritually devoid anti-human entities. (I once saw a documentary that compared corporations quite aptly with textbook psychopaths.) Corporations are robotic constructs beholden to shareholders blinded by greed, and for those in their employ it’s a matter of survival of the fittest. If the employee’s own good is sacrificed by the greater good, then it’s culturally OK -nay, encouraged & expected- that the greater good be sacrificed. This regime is not sustainable & will devour everything & everyone. Corporations would rather pay $50 million later than $10 million now (say, in a case concerning environmental impact). It’s all about instant fiscal gratification – it’s not even good business. In the meantime -in this example- our environment gets destroyed.
I’m no economist, but it seems clear that unleashing the bankers (under G.W. Bush) & letting them run wild is what caused the stock market to crash à la 1929. Fortunately, in one sense, our Canadian bankers are much more conservative, and hence our banking system is much more stable. Having said that, good luck getting a loan from a Canadian bank even in the best of times…
You: “Can I borrow $1000?”
Cdn bank: “I dunno – do you have $1000?”
A free, unfettered market equals a descent into chaos, madness & tribalism. It could even be characterized as devolution. In this dog eat dog world of finance, one thing seems clear – if my banker doesn’t have a mohawk, he ain’t worth his salt.
Actually, government caused the Great Depression. It was Government economic experimentation that turned what would have been a recession at worst into a long horrible mess.
The current problems are also due to government economic mismanagement here in the U.S. (the quasi-government agencies called Fannie and Freddie) and in the UK (where markets are so heavily regulated that it is hard to tell where the private sector really ends and the government sector begins). This, of course, sends ripples through the global economy.
Sadly, because government is really the problem, and government is presenting itself as the solution, we will really get more and bigger problems.