Timothy Garton Ash: Look Out for Another Financial Avalanche
[Timothy Garton Ash is a professor of European studies at Oxford University.]
I felt it was time I got to know the almighty. I mean, of course, the bond markets. For at their call, the governments of this world tremble. Before them, every knee shall bow. To fend off their wrath, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has just presented the most draconian budget in living memory – a burnt offering on the altar of this god we call simply “the markets.”
So, over the past few weeks, I have been talking to traders, strategists and analysts in London’s bond markets. Let me say at once that I am a complete novice and amateur in this field. If you want expertise, read no further; turn instead to the Financial Times. If, however, you will accept me as your ordinary citizen’s emissary to Mount Olympus, read on.
The first thing that struck me was a Wizard of Oz effect. Pull back the curtain and you find, behind that giant figure with his booming, mysterious voice, a little man pushing buttons and pulling levers. Or rather, thousands of men (and a few women). Most of them, far from manifesting Olympian, god-like arrogance, seem even more terrified than the rest of us. Partly, no doubt, this is because they are paid to be nervous, but it is also because they better understand the very dangerous place we are in. And one reason they understand it better is that they know the danger comes also from themselves. For the financial markets are a classic example of what social scientists call a collective-action problem. Thousands of individual traders make decisions that are individually rational, at least in the short term, but collectively irrational....
Read entire article at Globe and Mail
I felt it was time I got to know the almighty. I mean, of course, the bond markets. For at their call, the governments of this world tremble. Before them, every knee shall bow. To fend off their wrath, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has just presented the most draconian budget in living memory – a burnt offering on the altar of this god we call simply “the markets.”
So, over the past few weeks, I have been talking to traders, strategists and analysts in London’s bond markets. Let me say at once that I am a complete novice and amateur in this field. If you want expertise, read no further; turn instead to the Financial Times. If, however, you will accept me as your ordinary citizen’s emissary to Mount Olympus, read on.
The first thing that struck me was a Wizard of Oz effect. Pull back the curtain and you find, behind that giant figure with his booming, mysterious voice, a little man pushing buttons and pulling levers. Or rather, thousands of men (and a few women). Most of them, far from manifesting Olympian, god-like arrogance, seem even more terrified than the rest of us. Partly, no doubt, this is because they are paid to be nervous, but it is also because they better understand the very dangerous place we are in. And one reason they understand it better is that they know the danger comes also from themselves. For the financial markets are a classic example of what social scientists call a collective-action problem. Thousands of individual traders make decisions that are individually rational, at least in the short term, but collectively irrational....