Larceny in the Human Heart

Ben Stein, in the NY Times, writes an impassioned article entitled The Unending Allure of the Free Lunch. He blames deregulation (as well as the usual factors of greed and/or stupidity) on the subprime crisis.

One of my favourite books is Devil Take The Hindmost by Edward Chancellor (great name for an economics writer!) in which the history of speculative bubbles provides (one would think) a crash course in short-term gain versus long-term pain. The pain part of the cycle has begun (with stock market problems and repossessions a significant feature for the UK housing market again) yet is anyone surprised that here we are again?

As Ben Stein puts it so passionately at the end of his article:

“Is anyone ever going to wake up to the fact that there is a lot of larceny in the human heart and that there are a lot of sheep waiting to be shorn and that regulation is not a bad thing? Or will we just lurch from massive meltdown to massive theft and on and on? Is anyone ever going to get it? Anyone? Anyone?”