Economics is a tool not a moral force. It's the silly dull Marxists here who think the prime intent of economics is social engineering who have it hysterically wrong. It's not a moral anything. It is neither good nor bad.

I know very little about finance. When I read your article this morning, I thought it was a reasonable explanation for know-nothings. After reading the comments on your article I became confused.

I'm now back to the point of being a financial know-nothing. It seems that the comment posted here argues that the current economic system is beyond criticism. It is what it is, like nature. Why is that? Granted our economic system is complex, but why should we not be able to criticize.

My favorite metaphor: Capitalism is like fire, tightly restricted it can be a powerful force for constructive good, left to it's own it will destroy.

I haven't found a single libertarian able to argue against this.

By george, your critic sounds like the kind of can-do fella who'll somehow manage to prosper when the whole capitalist edifice collapses around us.

Kindly send me his email address so that, come the day, I might swap big pieces of our retirement fund for something equally useful, like shoes or dried beans. Thank you!

I was merely pointing out that a social form (capitalism) has become completely reified (i.e. natural). That is the critical point: we only affect nature/capitalism through the unintended consequences of our social activities. And whereas social control over nature was always at best a very delicate proposition, social control over social forms, social activities and ultimately human history, seemed - at least in theory - within our grasp. We have failed. This has nothing to do with good or evil but with access to historical agency. Until we find another way to organize social relations, we are like the inhabitants of a Peruvian town sitting atop a subduction fault.

That answer does make more sense to me, but again I'll mention that I'm swimming beyond my depths.

Humanity's history is the history of conquering forces of nature. Too cold? Find shelter. Can't find it? Build it. Too dark? Electric light!

Capitalism is indeed like a force of nature. But that doesn't mean that it is intrinsically in our best interest to let it run rampant over us. It may not contain concepts of good and evil (hell, we can't even come to agreement within our own country what good and evil is, much less a pan-human concept), but it definitely contains aspects that are destructive and constructive to our society. It behooves us to attempt to minimize the destructive aspects and maximize the constructive ones, don't you think?

Perhaps forcing banks and lenders to be honest about their risks and to deal with them instead of forcing the rest of society to foot the bill will encourage greater responsibility in the lending industry. Which, if I'm not mistaken, would go a good ways to keep housing prices from inflating because any reckless idiot can take out a home loan, unreasonably increasing the demand pool.

This is a case where we aren't even talking about government enforced redistribution of wealth, just enforcing the age-old virtue of honesty on people who seem to be utterly lacking in it.

Don't get too enamored of your 19th century critic. There are very real differences between the tangible and intangible assets at the heart of this mess. Houses are tangible. Senior tranches of Alt-A mortgage bundles are intangible. Junior tranches of sub-prime bundles are pure illusion.

Financial crises, while messy, are usually "contained", kept away from anything but the margins of the average person's life. 1929 and the crash, or stagflation in the seventies are some notable exceptions. The financial finaglings of the past 6 years have deeply embedded the effects of the intangible economy into the tangible one. So while the commentator can assert that all is one and it's all beyond moral criticism, remember that saying "all is one" is just a way to shut down discussion, that the strong linking of hedge fund's deeds and people's homes only happened recently, and that there are plenty of other standards other than moral to judge things by.

And neither nature nor the economy is ever random. We're just ignorant.

Honestly it disturbs me that Salon draws such pretentious readers. How Heidegger's emphasis on facticity has anything to do with a very straightforward essay on mortgage loans is beyond me (and I wrote my MA thesis on Heidegger); or maybe certain Salon readers just like to namedrop Hegel and Heidegger because it makes them feel better about themselves? I'm also very surprised to hear that 'binaries' started with Mussolini (lol!)

...including the one who posted that post. Morally stupid, that is.

There are many things capitalism is really lousy at: preserving the commons, most generally.

Within that notional area, you can find our wrecked medical-care system, a system that would work far better, and be far cheaper and more efficient, as well as higher-quality, and FAR more fair, if administered as a quasi-socialist system. This is not even debatable, whatever anyone may say. All you have to do is look around and see the truth of it.

So, capitalism is REALLY bad for people's health. From our medical care system, to the idea that polluting our planet is fine as long as it makes money (our flavor of capitalism, esp. in America, never counts the cost of pollution in market activity, and when government TRIES to do that, they get shucked-and-jived to death by people who don't seem to care that our children will all be breathing poison and living in shit, if we keep on this way).

Capitalism is morally wrong in numerous other ways, but they all relate to preserving the commons. When you let capitalists destroy the commons, that's evil.

So, posters who say capitalism is neither good nor bad, don't know what the fuck they're talking about. Or they're right-wing trolls.

And if you say "capitalism isn't bad or good, it's the people who use it" I say that's a distinction without a difference. It's like saying guns don't kill people, people kill people..a more specious piece of crap I never heard. Without people, guns couldn't do shit. Same with capitalism. Inevitably capitalism will be used for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. It has been ever thus. That's the essential nature of it.

The latest problems in the financial markets are clearly the result of the creation of dangerous, not to say immoral, financial instruments, instruments that can, and will, and have, do great harm in the hands of people with no principles other than greed.

These instruments never should have been *allowed* to exist.

But, these instruments are a natural creation of capitalism, which is biased toward the creation of monopolies, and toward cheating, by any means necessary. Andrew's original article made that abundantly clear. These exotic derivatives, and their management, were simply a form of cheating.

anyone who says otherwise is merely shilling for our most recent versions of robber-barons.

In order to survive the end of fossil-fuels, let along thrive, we are going to have to completely re-tool our current arrangements, and that includes largely unfettered capitalism. We're going to have to design a form of socialism, one that works, because if we keep on this way, we'll all go down the tubes. Any sustainable system of economic activity in the face of declining energy sources must have as its goal the preservation of the Commons before all else. And that means capitalism is OUT.

Go ahead and say capitalism is a wonderful thing...but face the music about its consequences: this economic system, in its many flavors, used by humans, is destroying the planet. It cannot be sustained. Answer that, all you Ayn Rand acolytes.

And don't give me that crap about how the Soviet systems and the Chinese communiest systems were equally bad. They were, in their way. But they were not real socialism. they were capitalist systems camouflaged as socialism. Benefits flowed to a different group of people is all..but the concept was the same. Whatever propagandists in Russia and China may have said, their systems were also designed to benefit the few at the expense of the many.

Soon the choice will be stark: some kind of fairness to all, or annihilation. It's just a matter of time.