Our recent crash course in brutal market outcomes...

Saturday, November 26, 2011

“Our recent crash course in brutal market outcomes should underline a crucial point: The patina of smartness that has so long shielded Wall Street from critical inquiry amounts to little more than the evasions undertaken by people with money who do not care to hear others questioning how they make that money. Despite the Randian lore now coursing through the Tea Party and the GOP presidential field, genius and common sense do not prompt financiers to invent increasingly unpredictable financial instruments to make more money (or maybe wreck the global economy); ideology does. Canada, for example, forbids certain types of investment for the simple reason that it could put too many Canadian citizens at real risk. We’ve made other choices. So when a former Fed employee tells me that you need people in finance regulating finance because it’s so darn complicated, it looks more like the ideology of high finance infecting the seats of regulation.” ows and the downfall of the smartest guys in the room - bookforum.com / daily review (via ronmarks)