Who's to blame isn't really important. Passing around blame doesn't solve problems.
Analyze the situation. Appeal to the present and to the past to determine what went wrong.
Eliminate the causes of that wrong.
Take steps to lessen the effect of that wrong.
Cross fingers.
Jon
We may be fighting against human psychology on that one. After the Great Depression there were many economic safeguards put in place to reduce the chances of another Great Depression. In the ensuing years these regulations were stripped away. The idea was to let the economy keep growing. We thought we knew best and ignored the wisdom of those who had gone through a really bad economic depression. The result? We repeated the mistakes made 80 years ago.
We humans are shortsighted. We weigh the present and immediate future more heavily than the past and the distant future. On top of that, we put our trust in politicians who campaign on increasing wealth in the here and now without any thought to the future (i.e. terms when they will not be running for office).
Alan Greenspan summed it up best. He thought that removing regulations was not a problem because those handling investments had their long term success in mind. He was wrong. They are just as flawed as any other human. They saw a chance to make big short term returns, and they took it. Investments poured into brokerage houses that advertised these schemes while more even handed brokerage houses were called dinosaurs.
Frankly, this whole cycle will probably be repeated 2-3 generations from now.
Edited by Taq, : No reason given.
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