On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 06:56:33PM +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: > http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/09/a-ripe-moment.html
i think that's a naive and silly article based on the 'market cabal' fallacy that's also popular to explain the high price of oil: it's those fat cats that are secretly setting prices for X, buying jets while robbing us poor honest folk. use too much energy, and the price goes up. take lots of loans you don't earn enough to repay in the hope that other people will take loans too and prices will keep going up and, well, when people stop buying so many houses things collapse. while it's true that poor regulation helped this happen in the US - poor regulation that allowed companies to act irresponsibly - it was also over-regulation in some areas that created the problem in the first place by allowing individuals to act irresponsibly. eg: the US is one of the few countries where if you can't repay your loans, as an individual, you can just declare personal bankruptcy and even get to retain many assets; if you stop paying a mortgage, at worst your home can be repossessed, even if it's not worth enough to repay your loan. i suppose this is the US's "safety net" though the european welfare states do a better job of making it transparent, and providing "safety" in a way that does not mainly reward irresponsibility... best, rishab
