Out of Whose Control?

With the pace of economic news vastly exceeding the amount of time I currently have to dedicate to this blog, there is no point in trying to keep up.  Despite this, I’d like to quickly post regarding a comment made by Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble:

“I’m convinced the markets are really out of control. That is why we need really effective regulation, in the sense of creating a properly functioning market mechanism.”

CNBC

I believe this remark belies a deeply rooted but often hidden truth.  If the markets are out of control… out of whose control are they?  A bit of a trick question perhaps, because the markets never were in anyone’s control.  There is nothing to fear here except perhaps the “really effective regulation” which will soon burden the markets.

And yet, not in the gloomiest, grayest, most sterile corner of the seemingly all-powerful Soviet Union was the market ever truly in anyone’s control.  It found a way to survive because market forces are neither idealogical nor political, they are simply human forces which continuously bubble to the surface to astonish well-meaning and diabolical bureaucrats alike.

Don’t worry when things seem out of control… rather worry when they seem too controlled.  And yet, know that the appearance of control and control itself are not at all the same.