11–17 of 17 posts
> The importance of economic facts may not be obvious to Americans. "What does the fish know about the water in which it swims?" asked Albert Einstein. Interesting how that water and fish story repeats itself...
It is a ridiculous analogy tho'. What do humans know about the air we breathe? Well quite a lot actually. What do humans know about the ground we walk on? Ditto.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a ridiculous analogy tho'. What do humans know about the air we breathe? Well quite a lot actually. What do humans know about the ground we walk on? Ditto.
And what did we know about air before the 1500s or so - for the last 50 millennia?
Not directly related to the article, but something I've been thinking about. In times past, we had a confusion between politics and church. The pope had a lot of weight to throw around, kings had an on-again, off-again relationship with him. Politics and state were intermingled, and the suggestion it didn't was either laughed at, or someone would try to kill you. Then we had a series of social revolutions that create…
In the case of the banks, their regulation by the state is a recent phenomenon, as is fiat money itself. So we can look at what happened before when banks were more independent. I'm no expert on the subject, but it doesn't seem all that attractive - as the article mentions, crashes and panics were a regular feature back then.
Don't confuse correlation with causation. I think de Soto makes it clear that it wasn't the banks per se that caused friction back in the old days, but rather the lack of comprehensive, accurate, and accessible records.
I'm skeptical about this working since rating agencies should, in addition to following formulaic rules, look for company specific pieces of information that would affect the rating, but its an interesting idea.
> The importance of economic facts may not be obvious to Americans. "What does the fish know about the water in which it swims?" asked Albert Einstein. Interesting how that water and fish story repeats itself...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a ridiculous analogy tho'. What do humans know about the air we breathe? Well quite a lot actually. What do humans know about the ground we walk on? Ditto.
And what did we know about air before the 1500s or so - for the last 50 millennia?