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... glut model makes sense, then the people taking on risk exposure through complex derivatives already correctly know the risk of a financial system collapse, and interfering with their decision making is going to lead to a less good result.

And in the savings glut universe, if there were these things that the government could do to facilitate the sustainable harvesting of domestic resources, the private sector could do it too (and more efficiently), unless the government were to interfere with their ability to put deals together.

The fact that government can plan complex systems and implement strategic infrastructure permitting new activity to take place ... that fact is of no relevance in a universe where you assume that all complex systems of use are sitting somewhere in a book of blueprints and that innovation is simply a matter of copying the appropriate system out of the book.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Fri Oct 17th, 2008 at 03:17:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]
So the Savings Glut model makes sense if and only if you assume that Markets Always Know Best?

Because then anything the government might do to regulate derivatives would already be anticipated by the market and priced into the derivatives?

Meaning that a form of derivatives that would pose a significant risk of systemic collapse (i.e. a risk that isn't thermodynamically small) would be priced prohibitively?

Meaning that what we're seeing right now before our very eyes Cannot Happen(TM), any more than all the air molecules in my living room can spontaneously gather under my table, thus choking me of air?

Now, if something actually happens that your model has assigned a thermodynamically small probability... Normally, you'd chuck that model out, right?

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Oct 17th, 2008 at 03:45:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Its in the universe of a well-connected complete market system, including implicit valuations of what would be happening in the complete network of forward markets if they existed, that savings and investment as an equilibrium process makes sense.

In the real world, an equilibrium between aggregate saving and aggregate investment then proceeding to drive national income just doesn't make sense ... out here, investment is one of the drivers of income and income one of the drivers of saving.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Fri Oct 17th, 2008 at 03:56:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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