The March of Folly in governing Wall Street is the result of incompetence, and decadence, acting according to wishful thinking rather than obedience to the facts.
A reader of mine, pamelajean, wisely literate, suggests that the late Barbara Tuchman's book, "March of Folly; From Troy to Vietnam," can be aptly applied to the meltdown, the loss of trillions in wealth, our painfully modest economic recovery these past few years.
"It would not be terrorists that brought down our financial institutions," pamelajean wrote me. But rather our own people- there were too many games being played (by) government, financial institutions, Wall Street investment executives."
And the games go on. Congress tries to deep-six the lousy bill to regulate Wall Street. The behemoths of finance are still too-big-to fail. Derivatives are still an opaque mystery. Balancing the federal budget is a farce that awaits 2013. Willful blindness is alive and well.
