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Gary's opionion is supported by a group of academics who are known as "beahvioral" econmmists - one of them being George Lowenstein of Carnegie Mellon. As I understand this theory, it studies the actual brain behavior of people as they make economic decisions, such as investing. It is a different way of doing economic research because they are working with psychologists to study how humans make economic decsisions. It is an approach that might challenge the theory of economic rational behavior.

forgot this before, but really, in an 'ownership' society where one individuals debt can be 'owned' by another 'individual' [re:corporation], as long as the new owner isn't responsible to the previous seller for increasing value of the original purchase, but rather just to the next buyer of the debt, which means having their own money is no longer at actual risk, then isn't inflation inherently built into process in an inherently unstable manner since everyone 'needs to be paid [off]'? The risk-reward feedback loop is definitely skewed then from the value of the original purchase without that responsibility being built into the actual ownership.

Gambling, under any other name, is still a risk.
Anyone who promises to give you a greater reward than the actual real growth rate of the economy as a whole, is a bookie - regardless of any official titles.

The problem with businesses caring so much about their market rating is that the people at the top make more money based on 'productivity' which means they don't want to hire enough people to do the job correctly. Everyone I know of in the business world is working 60+ hours per week under enormous physical and emotional pressure so the guys on the top can make big bonuses!

How much does the ideas of markets being "rational" and "efficient" hark back to Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand"?

Can you please ask Mr. Fox about naked short-selling? Thank you!

Thanks, j!

i'm a six-sigma kind of person, and there's basic Total Quality Control that started back after WWII with Deming at NYU/City College before he headed up the econ dept at MIT.
How is it that the ideologues got ahead of the deregulators who had so much less statistical/mathematical risk management skills [yes, i'm talking slide rulers] even amongst the highest levels of corporate management at many of these 'financial' houses? I'm not on Goldman's side here, but they do seem to be paying attention to the actual math here. [Then again, I also have problems with corporations being called "individuals" and subsequent political policies about elections. Feel better, mozo!]

I just heard the names Wolfowitz and Friedman. Now I'm heading down to the emergency psych ward at Bellevue.

Economics has physics envy.

I have a MA in Economics and an MBA in Finance. I came to the conclusion in graduate school (years ago) that Rational Market Theory was totally wrong. As long as humans are involved in "the market", there will never be rationality.