[quote=SDEngineer][quote=bubble_contagion]How about making sure that Government will not interfere or influence the market economy, house prices in particular.[/quote]
Pure market economies are overrated anyway. Without regulation, markets overreact in both directions. We’re currently reaping the rewards of what a highly unregulated market does when the drivers are not rational actors, but real human beings who have a tendency to be greedy and shortsighted.[/quote]
Yeah, you’re right. Real human beings have a tendency to be greedy and shortsighted and incompetent. Don’t forget corrupt. That’s why we need an all powerful government regulating everything. Because the government is not made up of real human beings. That are greedy. Or shortsighted. Or incompetent. Or corrupt. Oh crap! Kind of begs the question, who will regulate the regulators?
I strongly disagree with you, SDEngineer. Free markets are grossly underrated. All of the failings of the market lately have been caused by government distortions but inaccurately blamed on free markets because the Republicans have misapplied the term. I challenge you to paint a realistic scenario in which the housing bubble would have occurred with actual free markets, absent the Fed’s loose money, the FDIC, and Fanny and Freddie providing an artificial secondary market. It simply couldn’t happen. Loanable funds would have dried up, interest rates would have shot up because of the shortage, and it would have been more lucrative to save and deposit in the bank than to speculate on houses. But that didn’t happen because the government intervened and tried to regulate the markets with low interest rates and stimulus packages.
America is founded on the principle that the rights of the individual are sacred and a strong centralized government is a threat to those rights. Democracy is part of that de-centralization of power. We don’t want to give up our vote, do we? The free market is another part of that de-centralization. It’s truly heartbreaking how few Americans grasp that and how many want to throw that right away in favor of a stronger centralized nation-state.