No Moss

It's Not a Crisis, But a Chaotic Calamity

Gee, I feel like it's the end of the world, Mr. Inger. Must be a market bottom. Yeah, it's a big problem. We have a big economy. Therefore, we have big problems, along with big successes. Our economy is shifting as we react to a changing global landscape.

Get used to it. We'll wring out the excesses and then real estate in California will go back to being impossibly overpriced, or maybe, hopefully, just a little bit less than impossibly.

It's not the end of the world, or even of the Republic. Greed took over for a while. As usually, the perps got a few handslaps, a few heads rolled, a few big guys lost a bundle. Mostly, the public lost, either directly or by bailouts.

But life will go on. The ship is still sailing, maybe a little bit slower right now. But we're scraping off a lot of barnacles, and we'll go faster in a little while.

Unregulated mortgage brokers? Bad idea. Hedge funds with leverage and black box "quant" machines? Why did we think those would work longer than someone's big paycheck? CDOs in banks' hands but not on the books? Real bad idea. 30-1 leverage at investments banks? Even worse. It was greed, OK? Billion dollar paychecks for hedge fund managers, bonuses and kudos on Wall Street and in bank board rooms for taking too much risk. We are scraping those barnacles off. They'll be back, but for the time being they're being scraped off.

We'll do a lot better when we have actually have to work for a living. And Mr. Cayne can go back to playing bridge.