Greenspan paints a disturbing view of the modern world as a financial dystopia

04-26-2011 • BusinessInsider.com/

The problem is that regulators, and for that matter everyone else, can never get more than a glimpse at the internal workings of the simplest of modern financial systems. Today’s competitive markets, whether we seek to recognise it or not, are driven by an international version of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” that is unredeemably opaque. With notably rare exceptions (2008, for example), the global “invisible hand” has created relatively stable exchange rates, interest rates, prices, and wage rates. Greenspan’s bleak vision, like Orwell’s before him, may prove correct. My view is that the financial crisis was not a sad by-product of modernity but rather a new episode in a very old story: systems that allow risk taking and innovation are inherently subject to periodic crises. We can surely avoid another crisis by outlawing all risk taking. The alternative is to strive provide a stable backdrop in which productive risk taking can flourish. The history of financial progress has, arguably, been one of generally increasing stability‐‐in economies where development has been allowed to occur‐‐supported by an evolving system of market and political institutions, laws and regulations.