The Republicans were saying the same sort of stuff in 1929. America learned, at great cost, that macroeconomics matters. We'd do well to remember those lessons.
Macroeconomics and the health of the financial system matter, but they no longer matter as much as they did in 1929.
The reason a meltdown of the financial system is a danger to the average man or woman is that he or she depends on goods and services whose manufacture or provision are coordinated by the financial system. But unlike the situation in 1929, there is now another powerful way of coordinating activities that most people in the developed world are, uh, plugged in to which could take over a significant fraction of the coordination that used to be done by the financial system (although the transition to new ways of coordination can of course be very painful).
I would also point out that the typical elite journalist is a woman living in NYC married to a financial professional, which will tend to cause the reporting on the consequences of any serious threat to the livelihoods of financial professionals to be exaggerated. (I am indebted to Penelope Trunk, who used to live in NYC, for this insight.)
Things still need to physically move, and money still needs to change hands. The bits of the economy that makes this happen aren't interested in bitcoins or karma. Coordinate all you like, but if oil tankers and container ships don't move, no-one moves.
That is an pertinent example because during the 2008 crisis, there was a news report that ships were refusing to leave port because of the lack of certain routine financial documents (letters of credit??). That was seen as evidence that the crisis was spinning out of control.
But even in a worst-case financial crisis, there will still be money! Governments might make mistakes that worsen the crisis, but the governments in control of the important currencies like the dollar and the euro are unlikely to make the mistake of hyperinflating the currency, which is the only thing I can think of that would make dollars and euros almost useless. And in the (very unlikely IMHO) event that dollars and euros and pounds sterling do become useless, such a situation would provide a fertile environment for some alternative like e-gold and bit gold to become widely adopted (even if the alternative have no chance of wide adoption in the present environment) because necessity is the mother of invention and of flexible attitudes.
But that is a bit of a side issue. The main point I wish to make now is that I never said that a financial crisis could not impose massive disruption and massive human costs in the short term. Instead, I gave an argument for why I thought we are unlikely to see a repeat of the Great Depression of the 1930s -- which I will point out lasted about 10 years. And in particular that no matter how misguided the monetary and fiscal policies of the major governments and no matter how greedy and destructive the decisions of the financial professionals, it will take a lot less than 10 years for most of the loss of human prosperity caused by a financial meltdown to be worked around -- because, like I said, one important difference between 1929 and now is that it would take a lot less than 10 years for the people reading this message board to devise services running on the internet tailored to the needs of the captain of the ship, the owner of the goods on the ship and prospective buyers of those goods that allow complicated continent-spanning positive-sum exchanges of value to take place.
> The Republicans were saying the same sort of stuff in 1929.
In 1931, Republicans in general and Hoover in specific were pushing stimulus and restrictions on production. FDR campaigned against these measures but continued them after he was elected. (And no, congressional Repubs did not oppose Social Security's enactment.)
Macroeconomics matters enormously. The financial crisis was caused by illusory growth from the ponzi innovation of a bonus culture + fraudulent ratings agencies.
Real growth comes from technological innovation. That has been equally true in 1929, 1933, 2006, 2008, and 2012. Go read Wealth of Nations (published in 1776). And I invite you to come out here to Silicon Valley.
EDIT: can't reply / too deep. I've never read Ron Paul newsletters, and I'd love to hear you explain how CDOs of highly correlated assets deserve AAA ratings. Love even more to hear how you think macroeconomic policy caused the shock.
That's not macroeconomics, that's classical economics. You do not get macroeconomics by applying microeconomics to everything at once.
Macroeconomics is concerned with things like money, interest, employment, and aggregate supply+demand of whole economies. Macroeconomics became popular once it became clear the the classical theories couldn't remotely explain the Great Depression. You don't get a 25% aggregate shock because people stopped innovating or a production glut or "illusory growth" or whatever the Internet libertarian crowd feels like blaming today. In the classical theory, you don't get people starving because bankers misjudged their balanced sheets because classical theory is not capable of explaining how the two are connected.
You really should read Wealth of Nations if you haven't. There are several macroeconomic trends that he retells from 300, 500 and almost 1000 years ago.
Comments
The Republicans were saying the same sort of stuff in 1929. America learned, at great cost, that macroeconomics matters. We'd do well to remember those lessons.
Macroeconomics and the health of the financial system matter, but they no longer matter as much as they did in 1929.
The reason a meltdown of the financial system is a danger to the average man or woman is that he or she depends on goods and services whose manufacture or provision are coordinated by the financial system. But unlike the situation in 1929, there is now another powerful way of coordinating activities that most people in the developed world are, uh, plugged in to which could take over a significant fraction of the coordination that used to be done by the financial system (although the transition to new ways of coordination can of course be very painful).
I would also point out that the typical elite journalist is a woman living in NYC married to a financial professional, which will tend to cause the reporting on the consequences of any serious threat to the livelihoods of financial professionals to be exaggerated. (I am indebted to Penelope Trunk, who used to live in NYC, for this insight.)
Things still need to physically move, and money still needs to change hands. The bits of the economy that makes this happen aren't interested in bitcoins or karma. Coordinate all you like, but if oil tankers and container ships don't move, no-one moves.
That is an pertinent example because during the 2008 crisis, there was a news report that ships were refusing to leave port because of the lack of certain routine financial documents (letters of credit??). That was seen as evidence that the crisis was spinning out of control.
But even in a worst-case financial crisis, there will still be money! Governments might make mistakes that worsen the crisis, but the governments in control of the important currencies like the dollar and the euro are unlikely to make the mistake of hyperinflating the currency, which is the only thing I can think of that would make dollars and euros almost useless. And in the (very unlikely IMHO) event that dollars and euros and pounds sterling do become useless, such a situation would provide a fertile environment for some alternative like e-gold and bit gold to become widely adopted (even if the alternative have no chance of wide adoption in the present environment) because necessity is the mother of invention and of flexible attitudes.
But that is a bit of a side issue. The main point I wish to make now is that I never said that a financial crisis could not impose massive disruption and massive human costs in the short term. Instead, I gave an argument for why I thought we are unlikely to see a repeat of the Great Depression of the 1930s -- which I will point out lasted about 10 years. And in particular that no matter how misguided the monetary and fiscal policies of the major governments and no matter how greedy and destructive the decisions of the financial professionals, it will take a lot less than 10 years for most of the loss of human prosperity caused by a financial meltdown to be worked around -- because, like I said, one important difference between 1929 and now is that it would take a lot less than 10 years for the people reading this message board to devise services running on the internet tailored to the needs of the captain of the ship, the owner of the goods on the ship and prospective buyers of those goods that allow complicated continent-spanning positive-sum exchanges of value to take place.
> The Republicans were saying the same sort of stuff in 1929.
In 1931, Republicans in general and Hoover in specific were pushing stimulus and restrictions on production. FDR campaigned against these measures but continued them after he was elected. (And no, congressional Repubs did not oppose Social Security's enactment.)
That's because before the Southern Strategy the Republicans were to the left of today's Democrats.
Macroeconomics matters enormously. The financial crisis was caused by illusory growth from the ponzi innovation of a bonus culture + fraudulent ratings agencies.
Real growth comes from technological innovation. That has been equally true in 1929, 1933, 2006, 2008, and 2012. Go read Wealth of Nations (published in 1776). And I invite you to come out here to Silicon Valley.
EDIT: can't reply / too deep. I've never read Ron Paul newsletters, and I'd love to hear you explain how CDOs of highly correlated assets deserve AAA ratings. Love even more to hear how you think macroeconomic policy caused the shock.
That's not macroeconomics, that's classical economics. You do not get macroeconomics by applying microeconomics to everything at once.
Macroeconomics is concerned with things like money, interest, employment, and aggregate supply+demand of whole economies. Macroeconomics became popular once it became clear the the classical theories couldn't remotely explain the Great Depression. You don't get a 25% aggregate shock because people stopped innovating or a production glut or "illusory growth" or whatever the Internet libertarian crowd feels like blaming today. In the classical theory, you don't get people starving because bankers misjudged their balanced sheets because classical theory is not capable of explaining how the two are connected.
You really should read Wealth of Nations if you haven't. There are several macroeconomic trends that he retells from 300, 500 and almost 1000 years ago.