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That'd be my bad.

Never heard of him

I think what's generally being pointed out is Rush Limbaugh is the only face the Republicans have remaining. The Republicans have been searching for a new face. The best they've done so far is Bobby Jindal, who commanded about as much respect as Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock.

Holy crap, that's awesome. (Just watched the beginning of the episode too)

Given Greenspan probably believes in those things just as much as he believes in Friedman's economic theories, why do you think he chose to blame the latter (specifically the free market aspect of it) in 20/20 hindsight?

I really don't think I have the flu but I've certainly been sick. Maybe I've had the flu. Hard to say... Last time I had the flu (the only time I've had the flu) I debated calling the emergency room on several occasions. It was a lot of lying in bed in agony between getting up to cough big chunks out of my throat and drink a bunch of water and eat cold meds. I assumed I must have at least two diseases... surely one disease can't be responsible for all these symptoms. I must have strep throat... my throat feels like cracked tiles of sand on a dried up lakebed. After two days of agony I was able to get up, go to a clinic and get tested. Flu, yes! Strep, no. Apparently it was a particularly virulent strain that year (I want to say 2004?) and it was killing record numbers of young children and the elderly. I've heard if I ever get the flu again it won't be so bad, which kind of makes me wonder if one of the colds I've caught recently was actually the flu. Hard to say.

So you're saying that assuming companies will act in the best interests of their shareholders (so the government needn't proactively act on their behalf) isn't a free market principle? Or is your kool aid that the whole free market thing gets tainted by any sort of government intervention and instantly withers and dies? Companies will always act in the best interests of their shareholders only if the market is otherwise unencumbered by government intervention?

You can read into it what you want (and it's clear you're reading into it the interpretation which supports your present disposition) but I'd rather go with Greenspan's post-mortem, which states that his own trust in the free market principles of companies acting in the best interests of their shareholders was flawed. I think that's a fairly unbiased opinion and one which is coming in 20/20 hindsight.

I asked this question in another, rather US-centric thread, and it didn't receive any responses, so I figured I'd give the question its own thread to see what the responses are. There's a school of thought in America which suggests "every economic downturn suffered by this country over the past century" can be traced to our central banking system, and furthermore that America's central banking system has lead us to be "victimized by a boom-and-bust monetary policy". Is there similar sentiment about the Bank of England? What is the general opinion on it? A good thing? A bad thing? An unnecessary thing?

It's certainly a welcome change to Friedman's economics, whose main practitioner (Greenspan) has now admitted are based on a model of the world which is fundamentally flawed.

One approach is to levy more payroll tax in exchange for providing healthcare coverage.

The Dow peaked around May 2001 and began a slow decline until 9/11, where it obviously declined quite sharply: http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chdet=1013806800000&chddm=104317&q=INDEXDJX:.DJI&ntsp=0 But look at what happened to the Dow starting around October 2007: http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/charts/chartdl.aspx?CA=1&D4=1&DD=1&D5=0&DCS=2&MA0=0&MA1=0&C5=11&C5D=1&C6=2008&C7=3&C7D=5&C8=2009&C9=0&CF=1&DB=1&DC=1&showchartbt=Redraw+chart&symbol=%24INDU&nocookie=1&SZ=0&CP=0&PT=8 I'd call that miserable failure. It's also indicative a good portion of that growth was fueled by bad investments which didn't really start going sour until the beginning of 2008. I think the markets began making that decision on or about October 2007, not after Obama took office.

It will also be interesting to see how this affects the deficit. Cutting spending and raising taxes is great, but it isn't going to help if the Democrats keep passing half-trillion dollar spending bills.

On the contrary, I think one of the crucial roles of regulated exchanges is to prevent price manipulation and fraud.

In other news, correlation implies causation. I think the present state of the market reflects a decade or so of poor economic policies more than it does Obama becoming present. "Clinton's recession" began several months after he left office. Obama has been in office for a month and a half now. Obama is not in a situation of his own creating. If a couple years pass and the Dow is still where it's at now, then it's time to start blaming Obama. It took 8 years of a Bush presidency for the sh*t to really hit the fan: http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/charts/chartdl.aspx?CA=1&D4=1&DD=1&D5=0&DCS=2&MA0=0&MA1=0&C5=11&C5D=1&C6=2008&C7=3&C7D=5&C8=2009&C9=0&CF=1&DB=1&DC=1&showchartbt=Redraw+chart&symbol=%24INDU&nocookie=1&SZ=0&CP=0&PT=10

I wasn't expecting this so soon, but: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/05/health.care.summit/index.html?eref=rss_topstories Very interested to see where this is going... I certainly support a move towards a universal healthcare system and have thought of America as somewhat backwards in that respect.

Sometimes hindering growth is good, such as if that growth comes from overspeculation, bubbles, bad investments, etc.

I've been criticizing the Republicans for years for being "borrow and spend", and now it seems like the Democrats are no better: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/04/spending.earmarks/index.html?eref=rss_topstories I really hope Obama starts taking a stand and reducing spending or raising taxes, but maybe I'm just hoping too much that Obama will be (Bill) Clinton.

The main drawback of iPhone development is Objective C, in my opinion. It's a language that doesn't really have any value except programming for Apple (i.e. NeXT) properties like OS X and the iPhone. Granted that for what it does it's pretty cool, but outside of that scope it's practically worthless. I wish Apple would support MacRuby on the iPhone, but they refuse to port the Objective C garbage collector over out of concerns for power or some silly rationale like that. But it's perfectly fine to have Safari for the iPhone execute garbage collected JavaScript?

They're not actively trying to reinflate it, although by virtue of what they're doing they'll prevent it from deflating as much as it as would happen otherwise. It's myopic to say that the bubble is doing anything besides bursting at this point. Their intention is to prevent people who in better circumstances could make their mortgage payment from losing their homes.

Yes, a country whose "democratically elected government" is a little more than a puppet government for the opium cartels who are now supplying the majority of the world's heroin. Afghanistan could use some work.

I've heard of MANET, but I've never heard of SMT. Googling for "SMT protocol" turns up... this thread as the #2 result.

A 1993 article: http://archive.deseretnews.com/archive/283248/SENATE-DEMOS-PASS-CLINTONS-496-BILLION-PLAN-TO-REDUCE-DEFICIT.html That sounds awesome! Thumbs up Bill Clinton. So yeah, his bill was supported in part by a huge tax increase, with hopes of lowering the national debt. I wish Obama would do the same thing... get rid of the tax relief, raise taxes, and pass the bill without any Republican support. Of course, he's already made promises to the contrary, so I guess that's out the window.

Not really sure... I was 11 years old at the time. Just a meme circulating around the liberal blogosphere I can't immediately verify with the Google. I hate sourcing something with DailyKos (and I'm sure you do to) but they've got some nice charts and stuff about... whatever they're talking about: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/2/14/172556/803/63/697617

Eh, what about the $160 billion bailout of the S&Ls in the '80s... and Bill Clinton's $496 billion stimulus in 1993 (passed without a single Republican vote)