The universe is an intricate machine of massive complexity. This gets lost in the typical, over-simplified pandering that passes for actual intellectual debates on TV. I always take it as a hint someone is being intellectually dishonest and/or spectacularly wrong when they attempt to reduce complex multi-variate causality to a simple factor. The world simply does not work that way.; its messy, confusing, complicated. Simple solutions to complex problems tied up in a neat little bow are usually silly school girl fantasies.
Which leads me to my column in today’s Washington Post: 10 lessons on the crisis beyond the debt ceiling. It looks at the ongoing causes of the financial crisis issues that simply have not been resolved since then. Most of these will b familiar to regular TBP readers. These make the debt ceiling debate look like kabuki theater.
Excerpt:
“The debt ceiling is hanging heavy over our heads. But that’s not the only reason it looks dark down here. We’ve got some major and prolonged challenges: ongoing debt issues, structural unemployment, a housing overhang and continued economic frailty.
How did we get here? Well, by way of a financial crisis, stock market collapse, bank bailouts and, of course, the Great Recession — and a good many moments of poor judgment.
Given the drama of the debt-ceiling debate, this is a good moment for investors and policymakers alike to look back over the past decade at the mistakes made by our institutions, private sector and government.”
Nice graphic, too:
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Source:
Debt ceiling: 10 lessons beyond that crisis
Barry Ritholtz,
Washington Post, July 31, 2011 page G6
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/debt-ceiling-10-lessons-beyond-that-crisis/2011/07/25/gIQAWlCmhI_story.html
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