I’m just sayin’. (Emphasis mine, words Solow’s):
[Bernanke’s] preferred answer is better and more system-oriented regulation. One has to ask then why regulation failed to see the crisis of 2007–2008 coming and take action to head it off. Bernanke suggests that regulators were lulled into inattention by the so-called Great Moderation. Our masters are all too eager to take the Panglossian view that a system of “free markets,†including financial markets, is self-regulating and self-stabilizing. Bernanke is surely right about this. The scholar of the 1930s has to be aware that there was similar talk about the New Era in the years before 1929. Dr. Pangloss has lots of helpers among the sharpshooters who profit most from the absence of effective oversight, and among simpleminded ideologues. They are still with us.
Cross-posted at Angry Bear.