carey_jim

Private Equity Acquiring Failed Banks Is A Bad Idea

Tim, you are starting to sound like a voice crying in the wilderness again.

You know, as well as anyone, that the world doesn't listen to reason, even if it makes a great pretense that it does.

The world lurches along by necessity, impelled by obscure laws of human nature, and tethered to technological advances.

We all need to reread Bohm-Bawerk, Le Bon, Pareto and Freud, among other great thinkers in economics, sociology and psychology from the past. We don't have the luxury of rediscovering their hard won truths.

In 1939, at age 83, Sigmund Freud, an old Jew, watched in horror as the irrational forces of Nazism overwhelmed Germany and more than six million of his fellow Jews were herded into concentration camps.

Freud had dedicated his life to the proposition that man's irrationality must be replaced with reason, as much as possible, and he placed his hopes in his creation, psychoanalysis. It wasn't a process direct exhortations to be reasonable, but a long, slow process of self-knowledge with the goal of balancing irrationality with reason.

The picture of British Prime Minister Chamberlain waiving a piece of paper signed by Hitler in 1936, and proclaiming "peace in our time" should convince all of us that history does not accept simple, reasonable solutions but all too often moves along with blood and tears.

Keep the faith.