OK, not really. But these lines from a recent NYT Magazine article caught my eye:
By contrast, Keynes created an economics whose starting point was that not all future events could be reduced to measurable risk. There was a residue of genuine uncertainty, and this made disaster an ever-present possibility, not a once-in-a-lifetime “shock.” Investment was more an act of faith than a scientific calculation of probabilities. And in this fact lay the possibility of huge systemic mistakes.
A "residue of genuine uncertainty." Sounds rather like Chuang Tzu, though he is open to a much greater tolerance for the unknown. Uncertainty, a Taoist might say, is all that is really genuine; that is, it is always true that there is much beyond our knowledge. But that uncertainty is something that is extensive and fundamental, not merely residual. Thus, the Taoist would be more emphatic about understanding investment decisions, and economic theory in general, as acts of faith. And, by extension, the Taoist would expect "huge systemic mistakes" to be more likely and common.
Nonetheless, it was refreshing to be reminded of Keynes' milder skepticism. In this moment of massive market failure and outright thievery it seems apt to remember that there is much we cannot know and that is beyond our control, and that applies as well to economic "experts" and government policymakers.
Thomas Jefferson warned about what would happen if private bankers controlled America’s currency. Jefferson’s warnings were ignored, forgotten and buried by the press, academics and politicians who were paid to promulgate the false promises of bankers. Americans took the bait, swallowed it and are now about to be flayed.
THE BANKERS SINK WITH THE SHIP BERNARD MADOFF—THE POSTER BOY OF DEREGULATION
The irony is that, today, bankers themselves are being destroyed by the very system they created. The excessive issuance of debt-based money by bankers is destroying bankers and banks as well as businesses, families, and governments.
Bankers’ influence turned government oversight into culpable blindness giving bankers the rope they needed to hang themselves. The soundbite of self-regulation ultimately spawned the largest Ponzi scheme ever, a decades long $50 billion theft by investment banker and former NASDAQ Chairman Bernard Madoff—accomplished directly beneath the blind eye of SEC oversight
Madoff’s extraordinary accomplishment is the pièce de résistance to the hallowed soundbite of free markets. I am a strong believer in freedom and free markets but only fools and dupes believe that today’s credit driven financially manipulated markets are free. Follow the money, not the soundbites. Follow the truth, not the bullshit.
http://www.kitco.com/ind/schoon/dec152008.html
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Oh, BTW, by far the best American Founding Fathers, Jefferson was a DEAD BEAT SLAVE OWNER. His poor children who were born of his slave/master sex happy nights were SOLD to PAY THAT PARASITES DEBTS.
Such a great system to export!!! that is why they need a lot of paid foreign agents to promote, to sell to the suckers, like Gobe or Yelstin, who,like Mr. Liu Xiaopo, advocate 300 years colonialization for China to satisfy his paying Masters! Sweet dreams! Don't let it turning into a nightmare, which is actually what is happening...
Isha
Posted by: isha | December 18, 2008 at 05:34 PM
Keynes' anxieties were sadly the result of his inchoate knowledge that the mathematical quantitative approach to economics, of which he was the foremost exponent, was unable to account for the actual dynamics of Human Action. He was handicapped both by his perspectives on the controllability of economic systems, and by his lack of a knowledge of time preference in governing Human Action. For an economics more in step with the Dao, look to Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard.
Posted by: TimH | December 22, 2008 at 10:04 PM