Some Fresh Thinking on the Financial Crisis
This is probably the best thing I posted on this blog.
If you’re tired of listening to arguments about which political party is to blame for the “financial crisis”, you may be interested to read Carl Tueman’s analysis:
The markets have failed, and this should (I hope!) give those Christians with a blithe faith in the free market system at least some pause for thought. Why, we should ask, has this system that is supposed to be self-regulating been so badly shaken? Who is responsible?
…when we look at the crisis in the markets and try to play the blame-game, then we should avoid reducing the problem to one individual or even to groups. Cries of `It’s the President’, `It’s Congress’, `It’s the Democrats’, `It’s the Republicans’ and `It’s the banks’ all have a certain appeal. After all, it’s always good to blame `them’ rather than ‘us.’ Indeed, speaking for myself, I reckon it was the Welsh wot dunnit all along; and any evidence to the contrary merely shows how deep and subtle is the vast Welsh conspiracy behind it all. Well, no, actually I don’t believe that at all, for the simple reason that any attempt to apportion blame to an individual or to isolate blame on to a particular group or organization is ultimately too simplistic. Governments, banks, political parties, mortgage traders - they are all intertwined in a way that makes such a crisis as we now face a result of a synthesis of mistakes committed by a multitude of miscreants, not the monumental miscalculation of a few.
Read the whole thing here, because it’s really worth it.
