Saturday, November 08, 2008

Trust, Economy, and the Arts

What do the arts have to say to us about the current financial crisis? Here are a few thoughts. Excepting the Marxists, who grossly misuse this fact for unethical ends, we often forget that economics is deeply tied to ethics -- the language of both tends to be the same. The author of the linked piece focuses on "trust," and it is "trust" that is indeed what is at stake here. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac failed because they proved untrustworthy. The solution? A government we trust even less nationalized them. How will this solve the problem of trust? It won't -- and hasn't. We do need a George Bailey. He understood what economic institutions are really about.

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