The free market as we know it is no more!
One of the central pillars of economic theory is the expectation that people and economic entities will always take reasonable decisions and make sound choices.
Oh boy, how wrong we have been all along!! It would have been better to have assumed that, as a matter of fact, all humans are incorrigible morrons and on that premises we could have put together the necessary safeguards in our economic theories to minimize the risks.
The unfolding economic quadmire the whole world is wallowing in, makes a mockery of the much-heralded assumption of reasonableness. We are all witnessing the consequences of the untested and laissez-faire decisions that have been made over the years by greedy and callous men and women in charge of many branded financial institutions.
Let me express a very critical fact that many seem to forget so easily:
designing very complex financial derivatives and other instruments and simply passing them through the system for implementation by people who have no idea of what they are dealing with coupled with the total disregard for checks and balances will always sink the ship!
Greed, deregulation and irresponsibilty are essentially the hallmarks of the present contagion.
As it was with Nick Leeson so it has been with these clueless managers of our financial resources. Only this time the scale has been massive, brutal and catastrophic!
Global brands are collapsing like dominoes before our eyes every day. The Securities Markets have lost trillions of dollars in a matter of weeks. This is unprecedented! It will take years for the markets to get back to where they were. I wonder if any lessons would have been learnt by the time it is all over.
