Complexity also adds to the danger that any one part of the hyper-financial system can bring down the whole.
If capital flows were contained by national borders (as they were until the 1980's) any one part of the system could only bring down a national economy. An analogy with wildfires and the role of firebreaks is apt here. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
I suppose I'm groping towards the idea that it may not actually be the Rating Agencies fault. We may have reached a point where it's not possible to calculate the risk involved in some of these instruments.
Of course, part of the disease is the reliance on calculation, many of us looked at various instruments and could see trouble ahead, but the "calculation models" did not...
