

Vaclav Havel about the designers’ civilisation - Tomek_
http://www.forum2000.cz/en/projects/forum-2000-conferences/2010/speeches/remarks-by-vaclav-havel-at-the-opening-ceremony/

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skylan_q
I like everything up to and including this part:

"I believe that the recent financial and economic crisis was of great
importance and in its ultimate essence it was actually a very edifying signal
to the contemporary world."

I'm glad he prefaces the next paragraph with "Most":

"Most economists relied directly or indirectly on the idea that the world,
including human conduct, is more or less understandable, scientifically
describable and hence predictable. Market economics and its entire legal
framework counted on our knowing who man is and what aims he pursues, what was
the logic behind the actions of banks or firms, what the shareholding public
does and what one may expect from some particular individual or community."

Because I know that the Austrians (most hard-core free market types) don't fit
into the above.

"And all of a sudden none of that applied. Irrationality leered at us from all
the stock-exchange screens. And even the most fundamentalist economists, who –
having intimate access to the truth - were convinced with unshakeable
assurance that the invisible hand of the market knew what it was doing, had
suddenly to admit that they had been taken by surprise."

The invisible hand of the market did know it was doing. It was correcting an
unsustainable boom. Were sovereign debt crises the fault of falling prices and
fluctuations in stocks, or because governments spent more than they took in?
Was the housing boom in the US a result of the market going crazy for no
reason? (hint: take a look at the CRA, low interest rates, fannie and freddie
to figure out that the answer is no)

The "visible hand" was what screwed up. This includes: governments and
coordination of activities between central bankers/globalists to explicitly
run the course of the world on their fiat money regimes.

