[vicar7]

The crash did not change us forever it was our ill advised response that changed it forever and is still changing it yet today.

[Canedawg]

How can anyone think they are seriously addressing “the financial crash” without raising the matter of $500B being withdrawn from the markets within a few hours, on 9/18/08?

This is like discussing the US’ entry into WWII without mentioning Pearl Harbor.

[mlocher]

"This was the collapse of an ethos that prevailed for a generation," Lowenstein says. "The idea that markets always have it right, that bankers knew when to set their own limits, that we didn't need government in Wall Street at all...that painful recessions were a thing of the past because the Fed had it all figured out -- that Wall Street I think we've seen the end of."

This kind of tripe is rediculous. Lowenstein is trying to get people to believe that capitalism is "broke" and that we need government to intervene.

Those that follow Lowenstein's thoughts will also follow an Obama takeover of our free market.

[Spok]

“This was the collapse of an ethos that prevailed for a generation,” Lowenstein says. “The idea that markets always have it right,”

Free markets ebb and flow through busts and booms; command economies are consistently stable, stagnant and unproductive. Keynes just preached incremental subjugation.

[WashingtonSource]

This sounds like conventional leftist thinking spinning the recent events.

[DB]

Government guaranteeing the loans/losses is what sets these things into motion. It is easy to be careless with other peoples money. No sane person would do what these people did with their own money. There should have been no government guarantees and no government bail out. Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and the others...

To blame all this on a lack of regulation is wrong.

There was plenty of regulation, regulation created by fools in congress.

[glorgau]

We’ve changed forever until the same old thing is repeated again.

[supremedoctrine]

I’ve been likening this to 9-11 especially since summer-fall 2008, when it figured so intricately into the direction of the Presidential campaign,——and what’s coming in NOvemeber, and onwards to 2012 , will be qualitatively different from every process of the Loss and Gain of Political Power at least in my lifetime. THIS time, it won’t be ‘satisfied’ by a pipsqueak little document like the Contract with America, and a short-lived gloating over the big accomplishment of the ‘94 midterm. SOmething FAR bigger is in the offing this time.Maybe I should read the rest of this guy’s piece.

[screaminsunshine]

Anyone with half a brain could see home prices were ridiculous.

[supremedoctrine]

WHOAA! From the look of the other responses, it looks like the only thing I would agree with Loewenstein on is the title-—sounds like he probably doesn’t get it the way I , and most of us, get it. I really do have to read the piece.

[freeforall]

* Only the government may print money.
* The government decides how much money will be in circulation.
* The government determines the price of money, i.e., the base interest rates. Should we describe our economy as a “free market”? Or should we say that the government has rather King-Kong-like powers over money?A government owns the US monetary system. It has a compulsory monopoly. And around the world, virtually all of the money systems are government owned.

[Touch Not the Cat]

.
Bull carp

[Oceander]

Markets don't fail. People fail. The crash in 2008 was the inevitable, logical response by the markets to the immense amount of distortion, false incentives, and uneconomic pressure the federal government - mostly through liberal policies - put on the markets.

Put it this way - gravity holds my car's tires to the ground and makes it possible for the car to move forward by simply rotating the tires (no gravity, no contact friction, no movement). However, if I aim my car at the edge of a cliff and step on the gas pedal, it is not a "failure of gravity" when the car lurches forward, over the edge of the cliff, and smashes itself - and me - to pieces on the jagged rocks below. That is the inevitable, logical consequence of my failure to understand Gravity 101. Just so for the 2008 Crash - the market forced a massive correction to account for the decades and decades of asinine, uneconomic distortion the federal goverment had applied to the markets, and what's worse, still continues to apply unabated.

Markets don't fail. People fail.