by Steve Lussing

Created on: October 20, 2008   Last Updated: October 27, 2008

There is a certain mystery surrounding the current global economic situation. One is tempted to suggest that the economists of this world must have been sleeping. After all, if it isn't their place to jump in and offer solutions to correct the potential for economic failure by reading the markers and making the right predictions, then what are they there for? Couldn't anyone see this coming?

I guess that an MBA is only the least of what one can achieve if one is determined to leave university with at least some telling proof that they attended. What is probably the case is that so-called successful economists are already independently wealthy vanity publishers. I find it hard to believe that anyone would actually hire an economist and pay him a salary. I mean, what for?

Simplistic blame for the current crisis might be put on the stock traders. A lesson could be learned from the fall of the Japanese stock markets in 1997. Over-zealous traders were guilty of creating false share values by their frenzied and unwarranted activity, thereby over-valuating the most popular companies. The crash was inevitable, and repercussions are still felt. The very mass and power of huge conglomerates is what holds them together, but one wonders just how tenuous that power is, sometimes. Why are big companies like GM allowed to operate at a loss while the small business failure dooms it to extinction?

The reason things fell apart over the last couple of months has been more or less determined. Everybody who has ever refinanced a mortgage or invested in re-insurance is being blamed, whereas in fact the real fault lies with the banks and with the historic over-regulation of those banks. Perhaps, if interstate banking had always been permitted, and had never been regulated, then over the course of competitive economic history the few banks which would build themselves into the same kind of massive, unwavering institutions that the multi-national energy companies have built themselves into, would be buffeted against events like the current crisis by their sheer size. It is evident that the small banks which represent the main street majority can not bear the burden of too much credit. Again, where were the economists all this time?

Let us not leave out that great awakening Asian giant, China. Couple her economic clout with the greed of this world's biggest retailer, and U.S. manufacturers of everyday consumer goods are left writhing in the dust. Cheap, high quality foreign products flooding

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