Never trust a mathematical theorist

[David Sumner]

I just cracked open the March issue of Wired Magazine. The article entitled "Formula for Disaster" has done more to put the current economic crisis in perspective than anything else I've read or seen to date. In a nutshell, the very principle that Wall Street has been using to base its operations for the last 10 years has been proven faulty. I'm not just talking about what they loaned money to, but the very methods that were used to determine the worth of the debt itself. It's the equivalent of somebody coming along and disproving quantum physics. As I read all this, a light bulb suddenly turned on for me. Congress can't fix this. Barack can't fix this. No amount of dumping more money into the fire is going to fix this. An entirely new system has to emerge from these ashes. I'm starting to think that this current "slowdown" is going to continue for at least a generation.

[Tressie]

We were reading the same thing! LOL I was going to post the article on netbooks but this one is a doozie, too. I'm no theoretical math genius but I never understood how, exactly, math could eliminate randomness. I know that game theory addresses this to an extent, but I just don't trust it.

[David Sumner]

I found it interesting that after all this went down, David Li returned to China. Some part of me wonders if we aren't already at war with them, and the destruction of our economy isn't the first of many battles.

[Vaughn]

My MacroEcon professor mentioned something similar to this, and I'll have to agree. What needs to happen is something similar to the shift from Classical Economic Theory to Keynesian Theory. With all the population growth, expansion, and the shift from a country that manufactures things into a service industry, a new school of thought needs to be presented to adjust for how the world has changed.

[Tressie]

If you do not make "stuff" then you are a global dredge. It's that simple. We have traded for far too long on service and non-manufactured goods. No economy as large as ours can do that indefinitely. I'm for an idea economy, but the ideas have to embrace everything from the practical to the esoteric.