Shocked Disbelief

Still awash in the sea of endorphins unleashed by the accession of Obama, and waiting for the Big Shoe to drop on the economy. Part of the giddy hope that grips us is no doubt a reflection of the passing of Oedipus Tex from the scene. George Wanker Bush grows paler and more insignificant every day, filling his days issuing regulations and orders to ruin as many things as he can in his final 60 days, jetting around warning all those A students that regulating the markets is bad, this while we were treated to the  spectacle of Alan Greedspan admitting to Congress and the world that one of the linchpins of his economic philosophy was, how to put this? W-R-O-N-G.

“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Greenspan has been a life-long disciple of nutjob pseudo-philosopher Ayn Rand, a favourite of adolescents desperate to show their worldliness and to find deep meaning in an all-encompassing philosophy. That he would continue to cleave to Rand's undercooked gumbo of ersatz libertarianism in his later life does not recommend him.

We have, with the great help of Randers like Greenspan, been told that of all the fields of human endeavour—making cars, building houses, tending to the sick, representing parties in court, farming—tending to others' money should, alone among them all, be unencumbered by rules and regulations meant to curb abuses by mere mortals. Working in finance bestows infallibility, it seems. Markets are self-regulating, they take care of themselves, their self-interest (paging Ayn Rand) provides the necessary corrective.

Except, of course, when it doesn't. And then there is a state of shocked disbelief.

Although Daniel Gross in Slate tells us that analogies to the Great Depression are over the top, Nobel winner Paul Krugman on Friday wrote: "nothing is happening on the policy front that is remotely commensurate with the scale of the economic crisis. And it’s scary to think how much more can go wrong before Inauguration Day."