Posted by
Compassionate Conservative on Monday, June 29, 2009 12:10:41 PM
Time, the news magazine that never met a liberal economist it didn't like, has produced yet another article (not all by Time - see my posts from two or three weeks ago) concluding that markets are irrational. The implicit conclusion, hinted at by the article's last sentence - "markets stand no chance of ever getting prices right" - is that we need - need - government regulation of the financial markets. Pretty soon, liberals hope, enough people will reach this same conclusion that it will be converted to explicit policy, and not just for financial markets.
To give Time some credit, they do mention that Milton Friedman, probably the greatest economist that ever lived and a proponent of financial market freedom, understood quite well that markets aren't rational; he believed only that, quite logically to anyone who's ever worked in government, they were more rational than government regulators. This is logical because investors, who generally put up their own money - have some "skin in the game," as the saying goes - while government regulators don't.
And herein lies the key point on which a liberal rag like Time will never elaborate, because as liberals, they simply don't believe markets can or should be free. That point is that accountability is important in protecting the integrity of markets. Investors who put up their own money are accountable for any disaster that befalls them - caveat emptor. But if government officials err in their calculations and decisions, who pays the price for that? You and I do, friends. So taxpayers, as long as the Dems control the government, get out your checkbooks.