Free Market Economy

A free market economy was promoted as the right thing. I wonder for whom. Does the “free” part of that mean one is free to rip off any and everyone for personal gain?

Top CEO’s of financial institutions had lucrative financial packages. They did that to attract the best and the brightest. Based on current events, we may have been better off with the worst and the dumbest. At least they wouldn’t have been paid outrageous sums. Now the Tokyo market has plunged. They’re calling it a crash.

When I studied for my license to sell stock, the emphasis was on the value of a company. The prospects for company growth were also a factor but that’s where the speculation/risk came in. On that basis, if people had their money invested in a solid company, there was little risk and the gains to be expected were modest. The greedy - the speculators would go for the high risk where they stood to have wind fall profits strictly on speculation. We’ve seen that with the price of oil.. Values of companies and the products they produced were often highly overrated to a point of absurdity in many cases. I find it hard to feel sorry for those who lost money for investing in greed.

Yes, there’s a silver lining in everything if one looks for it. Perhaps conservatism will become more prevalent and place more emphasis on saving than on spending. The days when people would take part of their pay and put it into savings may come back instead of the mentality of having enough money just to meet the minimum payment on their credit card. The economy can still thrive with people spending money, but they will be spending money that is theirs, not the credit company.

On the bright side, this may be a good time for people contemplating divorce. Just think, 50% of nothing is nothing.

With the state of the banks in today's economy, 'saving' may return to stuffing mattresses and burying cans in the yard!

Well......

you look deeper into this thing and you start asking question like, "Would these jokers have gotten so deep in if it hadn't been for all the government support, implied guarantee, and subsidy of sub-standard loans?"

GREED

The free market system seems to be dead.

Still alive an well in the world of vice.

That's good to hear.

Well, actually, it's really true, of course. The massive fact of illegality makes possible the windfall profits available in drugs, prostitution and gambling. So it's a sort of non-taxable free market created by government intervention. Weird huh? The sickening thing is: without those three items of commerce, where would organized crime make a buck? We got it in this country when liquor was an illegal vice.

Which sort of comes around to something some of my commie buddies were saying back when it was the fad: there hasn't ever really been a free marketplace. Certainly not at any time since feudalism, and certainly not in any culture that build stone pyramids.

The government WAS the economy at one point, and has exerted force on the market all long: taxation, for instance.



I usually shut them up with, Well, if there's no such thing, why do you spend so much time ranting against it? They're worse than atheists about that.