| | Below is the first paragraph of the second section of the Gelinas article. (You still haven't said whether you have actually read, or still " have only scanned it." Its errors of facts omitted and of confused analysis will speak clearly enough to anyone who has read and understood Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal. (I won't risk guessing whether you have read that either.) But if you have read or do read both Capitalism and the essay from which I have excerpted below, I assume you will be smart enough to figure out the inconsistencies on your own, and without the possibility of my further accidentally upsetting you.
THE OLD RULES
It is easy to abuse analogies between the recent crisis and the Great Depression, but such analogies really are helpful in the arena of financial regulation. The searing experience of the late 1920s — and the Depression that followed — showed that the world of finance, if left completely unrestrained, can threaten the free market itself. In the 1920s, as in the past decade, bankers, corporate executives, and investors expected only more good times — and acted accordingly. They borrowed against every last dollar of expected future profit and then some, leaving themselves no cushion if those future profits slipped even slightly. To wring ever more money out of tomorrow's earnings for today, these titans designed financial instruments many magnitudes more complex than straightforward stocks and bonds. And they were left free by the government to do it.
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