Preventing 2006

I won’t comment on the “wonderful outburst of productive energy” Keynes attributed to the late 1920s. But I do have an opinions about the quinquennium from 2004 to 2008.

It was stupid. We were profoundly stupid. We mismanaged resources catastrophically, idiotically. We substantially oriented our economy around residential and retail development that was foreseeably excessive and poorly conceived. We encouraged ordinary consumers, rather than entrepreneurs, to take on debt, and let the credit thus created serve as the kitty in a gigantic casino of egoism. We saw the best minds of a generation destroyed by madness, glutted hysterical in suits, dragging themselves through the Street at dawn, looking for an angry bonus. We accelerated the unraveling of physical, social, and intellectual infrastructure that took a century to build and that we will desperately need some day, perhaps quite soon. We celebrated our stupidity. Based on some back-of-the-napkin theorizing, we turned virtues like planning and prudence into cost centers, and eliminated them. We idolized “the market” while at the same time reorganizing it so it would tell us exactly what some privileged groups found convenient to hear.

I am sure someone will shout “20/20 hindsight”. That’s bullshit. Everything I am saying now was obvious five years ago, and lots of smart people knew and understood it.

...As we evaluate financial reform and political change, we should keep in mind that it is not 2008 that we must struggle to prevent. It’s 2006 that was the worst of times, the piranha were feeding while we splashed and giggled in our water wings.

-Interfluidity