freeAgent

A Bad Day, Yes, But Enough with the Hyperbole

Thanks for putting out a level-headed article on the stock market drop. It seems all too many people and news outlets were ready to trumpet this as some sort of death knell for the economy.

-777.7: Where Do We Go from Here?

Oops, gain = pain.

-777.7: Where Do We Go from Here?

I'm glad that it appears we're going to get this over and done with as quickly as possible. Sometimes it's best to endure intense short-term gain rather than continuing to ignore a festering disease.

Why The Paulson Plan Won’t Work

I agree with the market for lemons analogy. It is, in this case, entirely accurate. However, I don't think that the solution here is government regulation. Government regulation is highly ineffective. As you said in the article itself, a large number of these mortgages which precipitated the collapse were /already illegal/ under current regulations. There are many problems here, but I don't believe lack of government regulation is one of them. We had artificially low interest rates from the Fed. We had Fannie and Freddie with mandates to supply the market with "affordable housing". We had banks taking the cheap money from the Fed and throwing it at anything that looked like it would provide return. You had the people on the street actually offering mortgages as well as the people entering into them flat-out lying in all directions. We need to bring accountability back into our system, and it will require a painful dose of reality for those involved--which is all of us. Some will hurt more than others, but it appears that those who will hurt the most are those who were closest to the fraud and whitewashing. The last thing we need is to spread and prolong the suffering through bailouts, inflation, nationalization, and regulation.