Economy

Well I think it’s definitely time for a little comic relief, so in recognition of the opening of Bill Maher’s Religulous, here he is with a very topical discussion of the economy, John McCain and Sarah Palin.

As regular readers will know, I’ve been meaning to write about this for some time now. One of the reasons it has taken me so long is that I’ve had a lot of difficulty forming an opinion on the merits or otherwise of the Wall Street bailout. On the one hand, I can understand the outrage of the average American taxpayer, in as much as they are in a sense footing the bill for Wall Street’s excesses. On the other hand, I understand the desire to prevent a “freezing up” of the credit market, which would have disastrous knock-on effects for the entire economy—not just in the US, but in the rest of the world too. If the bailout package does in fact achieve this, then I guess it is a necessary evil. But it remains an open question as to whether it actually will help things anyway—indeed, it is possible it may even make things worse. Considering the continued volatility in the stock market since the bill was passed, it certainly doesn’t seem to have had any beneficial effect in the short term. Indeed, the announcement of this package and its bumpy ride through the US house of representatives seems only to have made the stock market even more nervous so far. Perhaps the mere fact that such a bill was announced and considered necessary by the US government has really only served to fuel investor nervousness, whereas if it hadn’t been announced, perhaps the stock market might have recovered on its own. However, the reality of the situation is that we really don’t know—the extreme unpredictability of the stock market is such that we can never be certain what the best course of action is in these matters. And herein lies the problem: the stock market does not seem to obey any sound and consistent rules of logic in its movements, which I think is the crux of the matter here. Read the rest of this entry »