Saturday, September 27, 2008

Good date choice

I'm now glad I used September 26th as a future-prediction date as this Buttonwood Economist article has used the exact same date (for 2021) as a criticism of governments' willingness to ban short-selling to staunch losses due to share-markets falling.

5 comments:

Dr Clam said...

Oh, that's a good link. With any luck, this is the beginning of the slippery slope to ban all other forms of usury, reaching its culmination just in time for the global Caliphate.

Marco Parigi said...

Be careful what you wish for! It wasn't long ago that the Economist wrote a story titled "The Case for Nationalisation" re Freddie and Fannie. This goes against their usual mantra. If usury is banned and all banks are nationalised, how do we stop governments from trying to buy votes directly?

Dr Clam said...

Ooh, this is exciting...

What's wrong with buying votes directly? One vote, one value, traded on the open market, no more pork-barrelling for marginal seats. Sounds good.

Marco Parigi said...

The danger would be a system too responsive to public opinion - ie. too democratic. Admittedly, the system could be tweaked so that democracy could still take its turn. That would leave the factor that banks still need to be self adjusting in the economic sense that would mean sliding it towards the privatisation end of the continuum, but as I have explained in my principia, the Government can still own all banks, they would just be run in a competitive kind of way.

Marco Parigi said...

Unless you mean trading votes like they were water allocations - that's wicked!