DID THE LEFT LEARN FROM THE FINANCIAL CRISIS? (They never learn anything. As Bra

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/11/justin-fox-what-weve-learned-from-the-financial-crisis-noted.htmlWHAT DID THE LEFT LEARN FROM THE FINANCIAL CRISIS?

(They never learn anything. As Brad Delong demonstrates yet again.)

What “we” Learned is more interesting.

(a) Capital flows were catastrophically risk producing.

(b) Regulation of financial instruments was too weak to prevent fraud on a massive scale, and government created the incentive to commit systemic fraud, and the need to conform to systemic fraud because of a lack of regulation.

(c) That the state allowed, and encouraged, the privatization of gains and the socialization of losses.

(d) That the state still prevents individuals and organizations from suing individuals and institutions from regulating company, and financial system behavior via the courts, by declaration of standing, as a means of preserving the political right and responsibility for regulation of those institutions – and thereby creating the incentive for political influence and corruption. That they both create the problem and then offer to solve it isn’t lost on some of us.

(e) The Austrian theory of the trade cycle is correct, yet again. Expanding credit causes misallocation and eventually, structural unemployment.

(f) That the left blocked attempts to produce a compromise deal for spending that suited left leaning supporters, and reforms that suited right wing supporters. And that this block continues today.

(g) We tried very hard, and, it looks as though it is possible to bankrupt the state if we work at it long enough. And either we bankrupt it or it bankrupts us and our families. Our view is that our families are family and that the state is an arbiter, not that all citizens are ‘family’.

BUT THEN AGAIN, We aren’t positivists. 🙂 And the left is. Because it’s convenient.