Friday 21 August 2009

Financial double-think

Hat tip to Aidan C. for this link to Gillian Tett's piece on financial double-think in yesterday's Financial Times. Tett has been mentioned on PE before, and yesterday she wrote:

One of the founding principles of free market theory, for example, is the idea that markets work best when there is a free flow of information.

Yet, some of those bankers who have been promoting free market rhetoric in recent years have also been preventing the widespread dissemination of detailed data on, say, credit derivatives prices. Similarly, while bankers have taken the idea of creative destruction as an article of faith, in terms of how markets are supposed to work, they have been operating on the assumption that their own industry would never suffer too violent a wave of creative destruction.


You can read the whole piece here. Comments?

2 comments:

Brian Woods said...

Spontaneous, naturally occurring forest and bush fires are genuine instances of 'creative destruction'. Canopy is consumed! It is the seeds in the soil, activated by the heat that germinate and grow.

What we actually have is a massive spraying campaign of Roundup and Simazine - to obliterate any new growth whilst leaving the decayed canopy intact. Wonderful stuff!

Brian P

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the hat tip. Is there any way the site could set up a simpler way to make comments (like they have on economy.ie)? All the options for commenting (Open ID, etc) are confusing and probably unnecessary. Otherwise please explain how to use the different options.

Aidan C