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Laughter–the Worst Medicine

Summary:
Like many commentators, I regard August 9 2007 as the start of the “Global Financial Crisis“. On that day, BNP Paribas declared that several of its funds were being closed because liquidity in those markets had completely evaporated: So I was particularly amused–in a sick sort of way–to see this brilliant info-graphic on The Fed on Twitter today: it plots the amount of laughter in FOMC meetings between 2000 and 2012. “Peak Laughter” occurred literally days before the crisis began: Laughter, it is often said, is the best medicine. But that’s only when you know what ails you. If you are guided by ignorance, as the Fed was (and still is) by mainstream equilibrium-obsessed, non-monetary economics, laughter is a sign of delusion. The laughs plummeted in the next few days–from eighty on June 28 to forty on August 7, and then just one on August 10, the day after BNP made its statement–as reality punched the FOMC in the guts.

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Like many commentators, I regard August 9 2007 as the start of the “Global Financial Crisis“. On that day, BNP Paribas declared that several of its funds were being closed because liquidity in those markets had completely evaporated:

Laughter–the Worst Medicine

So I was particularly amused–in a sick sort of way–to see this brilliant info-graphic on The Fed on Twitter today: it plots the amount of laughter in FOMC meetings between 2000 and 2012. “Peak Laughter” occurred literally days before the crisis began:

Laughter–the Worst Medicine

Laughter, it is often said, is the best medicine. But that’s only when you know what ails you. If you are guided by ignorance, as the Fed was (and still is) by mainstream equilibrium-obsessed, non-monetary economics, laughter is a sign of delusion.

The laughs plummeted in the next few days–from eighty on June 28 to forty on August 7, and then just one on August 10, the day after BNP made its statement–as reality punched the FOMC in the guts.

Steve Keen
Steve Keen (born 28 March 1953) is an Australian-born, British-based economist and author. He considers himself a post-Keynesian, criticising neoclassical economics as inconsistent, unscientific and empirically unsupported. The major influences on Keen's thinking about economics include John Maynard Keynes, Karl Marx, Hyman Minsky, Piero Sraffa, Augusto Graziani, Joseph Alois Schumpeter, Thorstein Veblen, and François Quesnay.

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