Economical Numbers and the Dream of Regulation
The Paulson plan which aimed to "save the US/Global economy" was a 3 page document. The number 700 billion was based on NO data points. The best brains of the best capitalist economy -Paulson was a long time CEO of Goldman Sachs- chose an arbitrary large number. An ARBITRARY number. With suggestions that the Lehman's toxic assets only can be as large as 400 billion , this number may not be enough. With such bright minds in the leading positions of the government, I cannot understand how people can be lured with the dream of regulated markets. By the way, here is a quotation from a real bright mind about this issue. There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. Richard Feynman PS: Have a look at this hilarious mock e-mail that explains Paulson plan as one of those mails you receive from t...