Posner Blames Capitalism for Greenspan Goofs, Bank Binge: Books

[RJ Connors]

I don't necessarily agree with the author here as to what the causes to our financial crises but at least someone is starting to call it what it is. A depression.

May 20 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. has slipped into its first depression since the 1930s, says Richard A. Posner, and it’s pointless to upbraid the bankers who shoved us over the edge.

“I do not think they can be blamed for it -- implying moral censure -- any more than one can blame a lion for eating a zebra,” the outspoken U.S. appeals judge writes in “A Failure of Capitalism,” a provocative and irritating primer on the gravest financial crisis since 1929.

The crisis was caused by the market itself, not “the antics of crooks and fools,” Posner says. This might sound like blaming aerodynamics for a jetliner crash involving two drunken pilots, a hijacker and an empty air-traffic control tower. Yet a close reading shows that Posner’s assertion is something of a sleight of hand (designed, perhaps, to grab headlines).

Posner isn’t saying that capitalism is dead. What he’s getting at is how America’s love affair with the theory of self- correcting markets created a lethal mixture of deregulated finance and low interest rates.

(con't) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=azlzwb_THkrU&refer=home

[benld74]

1. Male Bovine Excretement!

Lions eat zebra's BECAUSE it is programmed into them. They couldn't stop if they wanted.
The bankers could have and didn't

[RJ Connors]

2. Like I said, I don't agree with the premise

but at least we are calling money on the situation. Thanks to George et al.