Eight Centuries of Financial Folly

An interesting read:

This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff.

The authors make the case that this time ("The Great Recession", as Paul Krugman likes to call it in his New York Times columns) really isn't all that different, and they lay out a scenario of what we can expect as the economy recovers from the latest collapse of capitalism.

Around the time of the breakup of Yugoslavia, I heard a commentator exclaim, That's what the Balkans do, after all. They Balkanize! Capitalism, like the Balkans, has a certain inevitability. That's what capitalism does, after all. It collapses!

As a private trader, I like collapses. Each crisis in capitalism creates opportunity for the nimble and brave, because each creates huge volatility in prices.

And that's a good thing. Volatility is the mother of profit. Without it, there would be little point in trading.

And with that happy thought, Enjoy the weekend!