the Wall Street crash is a failure of the imagination

Yesterday was the 79th anniversary of Black Monday, and today is Black Tuesday, two important days in the 1929 crash on Wall Street. Just, y'know, as an observation.

"Anyone who bought stocks in mid-1929 and held onto them saw most of his or her adult life pass by before getting back to even." said Richard M. Salsman* about the crisis, according to the Wikipedia page. So there's that.

This is one of those classical "prisoner's dilemma" situations we find ourselves in frequently in our society. What this situation makes clear is that if everyone maintains trust in the collective illusion of the market, the market will keep stable. What the stock market crash really is, is something that us literature majors can tell you all about (see? We can be useful - even in a depression! Hire me! Hire me!). It's basically a wavering in suspension of disbelief. Everyone has suddenly realised that their money really is Monopoly money and are panicking. Like Wile E. Coyote going over the cliff, suddenly looking down like an idiot. Stock market crashes, in effect, are simply a colossal, systemic, collective failure of the human imagination. And bright ideas are what's going to get us out of it.**

Society is a consensus reality we choose to participate in. A story that we tell ourselves. But some parts of that story have a really bad plot, bad grammar and poor writing. We need to rewrite those parts of the story without anyone getting hurt. This is the time, in other words, to remember that all money is pretend money. The only thing we get to decide is what kind of game we're playing. Are we playing capitalism or socialism? Monopoly or Junta, so to speak?

In short, if everybody would just hold on to their damned assets and be cool, we would all be fine in a pretty short time, while the "real" economy and the market got back in synch. If we could also reimagine what the world economy is supposed to look like while we're at it, that would be a fantastic added bonus.

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* BONUS TRACK:

But then, Richard M. Salsman's Wikipedia page indicates that he is an objectivist Austrian school eejit. Let me share with you, as a gift, the titles of some of his papers and books:

* "The False Profits of Antitrust", chapter in The Abolition of Antitrust

* “The Cause and Consequences of the Great Depression”:

- “Part 1: What Made the Roaring ’20s Roar”,
- “Part 2: Hoover’s Progressive Assault on Business”
- “Part 3: Roosevelt's Raw Deal”
- “Part 4: Freedom and Prosperity”, January, 2005, pp. 14–23.

* “Bankers as Scapegoats for Government-Created Banking Crises in U.S. History”

* “‘Corporate Environmentalism’ and Other Suicidal Tendencies”

* “Banking without the ‘Too-Big-to-Fail’ Doctrine”

* Breaking the Banks: Central Banking Problems and Free Banking Solutions

Remember, my friends, this is not the time for gloating or schadenfreude. This is a time for honest, serious, dedicated work.

No, I'm just kidding. This is the time for merciless mocking. And it's a good time to put these people out of a job. And also a good time for reading Keynes and Marx.

** Mandatory endorsement: And obviously, that's going to be easier with an imaginative, creative, flexible US president. Like, say, candidate Obama. An inflexible, uncreative, volatile, insecure president like McCain? Not so much.

DOW(n) 300

Ok, so the US economy is "collapsing". I'm not an economist, but that can't be good. The DOW dropped 300 points in 10 minutes this morning (2.3 %), and the stock exchange in Oslo was down 7 percent this morning, as well, I heard.

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Paul Krugman, world-class economist and newspaper columnist probably has some words to inspire us and calm us down, right, Paul?

Will the U.S. financial system collapse today, or maybe over the next few days? I don’t think so — but I’m nowhere near certain. You see, Lehman Brothers, a major investment bank, is apparently about to go under. And nobody knows what will happen next.

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Much, much more, most of which I do not understand, in this linky post.