Forbes provokes Sumner to don the robes of hanging judge for the hypocritical right:
If Forbes is right, and the markets are made up by a bunch of fools, then why not go with socialism?
Here’s what I think is really going on. The right has a political agenda. When the stock market agrees with that agenda, the Wall Street Journal and Forbes love
to cite its response to policy initiatives. For instance, in an
earlier post I mentioned how the markets were strongly opposed to
Smoot-Hawley, and seemed to favor NAFTA. But when markets don’t agree
with the right’s deflationary agenda, suddenly the markets are just as
unreliable as a Marxist economist.
His verdict rings true, but it reminds me of an earlier question that’s still bugging me: Why did financial markets like Nixon’s price controls so much? What gives, Scott? Was it just a random error, or what?