finance noodling

[ajva]

A brief finance-related noodle in the light of today's Bear Stearns drama, for those interested. I was just reading this in Wikipedia about a US bank that went bust in 1929. Ben Bernanke is known to have a particular academic interest in the ins and outs of the Great Depression. Friedman apparently thought that if the Bank of the United States had been bailed out at the time, the Depression might have been avoided. The whole area of central bank bailouts is one I'm finding really interesting, actually, in terms of possible medium- and long-term ramifications.

Mind you, I also saw a clip of Jim Rogers today opining that it simply wasn't capitalism, instead calling it "socialism for the rich", which I thought was a lovely turn of phrase. :o)