Krugman reviews Justin Fox’s 'Myth of the Rational Market'

[swag]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/books/review/Krugman-t.html?_r=1

Last October, Alan Greenspan — who had spent years assuring investors that all was well with the American financial system — declared himself to be in a state of “shocked disbelief.” After all, the best and brightest had assured him our financial system was sound: “In recent decades, a vast risk management and pricing system has evolved, combining the best insights of mathematicians and finance experts supported by major advances in computer and communications technology. . . . The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year.”

Justin Fox’s “Myth of the Rational Market” brilliantly tells the story of how that edifice was built — and why so few were willing to acknowledge that it was a house built on sand.

Do we really need yet another book about the financial crisis? Yes, we do — because this one is different. Instead of focusing on the errors and abuses of the bankers, Fox, the business and economics columnist for Time magazine, tells the story of the professors who enabled those abuses under the banner of the financial theory known as the efficient-market hypothesis. Fox’s book is not an idle exercise in intellectual history, which makes it a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the mess we’re in. Wall Street bought the ideas of the efficient-market theorists, in many cases literally: professors were lavishly paid to design complex financial strategies. And these strategies played a crucial role in the catastrophe that has now overtaken the world economy.

. . .

I came away ... wondering if underlying premise — that the current crisis will put an end to Panglossian views of financial markets — is right. Fox points out that academic belief in the perfection of financial markets survived the 1987 stock market crash and the bursting of the Internet bubble. Why should the reaction to the latest catastrophe be any different? In fact, what I hear from my finance professor friends is that there’s a lot less soul-searching under way than you might expect. And Wall Street’s appetite for complex strategies that sound clever — and can be sold to credulous investors — survived L.T.C.M.’s debacle; why can’t it survive this crisis, too?

My guess is that the myth of the rational market — a myth that is beautiful, comforting and, above all, lucrative — isn’t going away anytime soon.

[orwell]

1. The myth is tied in with...

..."the invisible hand", which is a thinly veiled euphemism for "god".

Ah yes, glorious capitalism, truly god's work.

[Gman]

2. This is what I was afraid of that

no lessons would be learned. And I guess I was stupid to think there would be because the old models produce too much money too fast for those that can play the system right. If anything, and I'm going to get this book, this book can tell you what to be aware of with your own money.

Much could be accomplished if accounting rules required companies to publicly account for money accurately and fairly. At least you could see the red flags.

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LOL! "Soros doesn’t really seem to have a method, except that of being smarter than anyone else."

I read "The New Paradigm For Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis is 2008 And What It Means" by Soros where he explains his reflexivity theory in detail. I've read other books by him where he explains it. It's amazing in that it's something, but probably in reality it's nothing more than gut feeling. I don't know that it's anything that can be quantified or made into a mathematical application.