A Completely Different Angle
In his WAPO piece "Blaming deregulation", Sebastian Mallaby delivers an analysis of the origins of the credit crisis from a demand-side point of view.
The real roots of the crisis lie in a flawed response to China. Starting in the 1990s, the flood of cheap products from China kept global inflation low, allowing central banks to operate relatively loose monetary policies. But the flip side of China's export surplus was that China had a capital surplus, too. Chinese savings sloshed into asset markets 'round the world, driving up the price of everything from Florida condos to Latin American stocks.
Interesting. Of course, I've noted time and again that Americans always tend to focus on one side of shady transactions (i.e., a transaction they don't like) usually to deaf ears.
Reminds me of Issue 5, which I just voted "no" on. Oh, yeah, by the way I just "early" voted.
I was thinking of putting up a post called "Regulation is the new Elitism" which would focus on the words themselves. The line I would be reacting against is "Oh, conservatives don't like elitism, but what about elite surgeons and soldiers?", ignoring the fact that there are multiple forms of elitism. Likewise, now we see the pinning of the anti-regulation badge with the simplistic false syllogism "Regulation would have stopped crisis, conservatives say 'regulation bad', therefore conservatives caused crisis." Again, this ignores the different kinds of regulations which were targeted and who targeted them.
