United Liberty

I don’t know how many times I have made the remark to friends and family that this Great Recession is occurring like a slow-motion movie. We saw the bodies sailing through the air in our peripheral vision—the Ken Lewises, the Alan Schwartzes, the Martin Sullivans, the Richard Fulds. The stock market implosion took several weeks to come crashing to the floor, and the resultant slow-blooming dust cloud looked thick and impenetrable from a distance, yet translucent and impressionistic up close. With our telephoto lenses we could capture snapshots of the flustered figures scurrying for cover, the fragmented federal institutions falling by the wayside, the thick unbreathable hot air billowing, and the knee-jerk uninformed decision-making with its domino effects.

There are good reasons to cast blame on multiple characters in this film. The financiers were short-sighted and egocentric—and they still are, with no market force intervention to change their behavior. The overseers were, and are, just as short-sighted and egocentric. No market forces ever touch their behavior, except maybe during elections. Even the central bankers were, if not shortsighted and egocentric, at least somewhat smug and over-confident, which is also to be expected since no market forces ever touch their behavior, except perhaps the flux and reflux of Presidential favor.