Market corrections will always happen, even in an environment that is undisturbed by the destructive intervention of politicians and their sponsoring industries. They are a very natural occurance which provide needed balance to the economy. However, your idea of inducing bubbles to acheive some ‘greater good’ ensures–by design!–that there will be sacraficial lambs. This time there will be lots of them.

So, I’ll stick to the Austrian School’s view on the matter. The fiat money system is prone to corruption and causing economic turmoil; this has been proven repeatedly throughout history, and it has once again come to fruition. Even if it doesn’t leave people homeless and destitute–the worst case–then at very least it causes a systematic rise in consumer prices which will never be matched by a rise in earnings at the lower income levels. And this is supposed to be ‘progress?’

Please excuse the following rant which is not well thought out, and made up on the spot.

A layperson’s comment on the current banking crisis is:

I have been thinking for some years that with the coming of computers, much “office work” is not needed. Along these lines, we might speculate that the whole tax system in Australia is used to support a huge “make work” industry for government employess and also for accountants. It is hard to see how these people are needed, when taxed could be collected automatically by computer.

Continuing this thinking further, one might speculate that the current management systems which are being promoted, are part of a “make work” system.

The beauty (???) of these new performance management systems is that they stress workers, ensuring that they die earlier and are less burden on pension funds.

In the early 1960’s, all we (”the faithful”) were expected to do was to go to weekly mass, and the sacraments, such as confession. This has been thrown out (rightly, on the basis that it is nonsense) – but it has been by a new religion, far more oppressive – our new priests are the media presenters.