Financial crisis update

Hi! This is not a financial blog but it's beginning to look as if it might be one, being as how it's the only thing that has encouraged me to write so far.

Did you ever wonder how it is that the vast majority of teams of financial professionals employed to advise us mere mortals in the street what's coming along, fund managers that'd be, are unable to predict that the economy's going to go pear shaped very soon, or that share prices will fall through the floor ... or whatever. Normally they can predict that interest rates are going to go up or down but that's because the way is all paved by governments and bodies making the changes long before they actually happen ....and we all know they're going to happen.

So you might have your money in a pension fund. Suddenly the market drops and your pension fund isn't worth tat. But erm ... weren't we paying that team of professionals to manage the fund, to perhaps actually anticipate wayward trends in the market and take steps long beforehand, erring on the side of caution, 'just in case'. Well no, well 'yes' we we were paying them, but 'no' they weren't anticipating (or at least acting as if they were) wayward trends in the market. I see it rather logical that a long period of frenzied, greedy speculation should end in tears. Maybe _I_ should charge for that insight.

I read today '.. "The former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, has conceded that the global financial crisis has exposed a "mistake" in the free market ideology which guided his 18-year stewardship of US monetary policy." ..' If I didn't laugh I would cry. I mean ...really... what are we on? Baa baa.... US treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, told the New York Times "I could have seen the sub-prime crisis coming earlier, I'm not saying I would have done anything differently.". Well why not?