10.13.08
Insanity of markets
sciftp
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/11/business/11nocera.html
October 11, 2008
Talking Business
Swept Up by Insanity of Markets
By JOE NOCERA
“I can calculate the motions of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.” – Isaac Newton, 1721, after the South Sea bubble burst.
Sometimes I think we must be living in a movie, some kind of nightmarish, upside-down version of “Back to the Future.” It can’t possibly be that in the sophisticated, computerized 21st century, we find ourselves experiencing the same kind of financial panic – the same kind of financial insanity, really – that has dogged mankind at least since the Dutch tulip mania of the 1630s. Can it?