You never know who's swimming naked til the tide goes out

Today's offering is on economics with zing, particularly on the dangers of nano-slicing what Grandpa would have quaintly called common-sense and its money-cousin, credit-worthiness. We owe the cool skinny-dipping title to a nice metaphor attributed to Warren Buffet on the topic of transparency and not letting yourself get suckered by soothing strategems and wishful thinking in the Financial Services fields. Economist Robert Kuttner liked the imagery enough to use it in his very informative and enjoyably readable piece posted over at Truthout. Read it, and see if you can agree with me that we'll be reregulating several wheezing sectors come 2012 or so.

On to another sage of teh dollar-sense and business-savvy, via AP:

You know, when you give a man more money in his pocket -- in this case, a woman -- more money in her pocket to expand a business, they build new buildings. And when somebody builds a new building, somebody has got to come and build the building.

"And when the building expanded, it prevented (sic) additional opportunities for people to work. Tax cuts matter. I'm going to spend some time talking about it...

Pretty good, yeah? Read more of his particular brand of wisdom to see why, yes, we'll be reregulating several wheezing sectors come 2012 or so.

And finally, we have The Maestro. In interview with France's New Observer, Alan Greenspan slips, and endorses socialism in certain cases - the industries that stack and push money around. The link leads to the Google translation and, aided by high school French, I've cleaned up a few of the algorythmic burps below but the gist is clear.

New Observer.

The New Observer. - You were lauded when you left the FED in 2006. Today you're branded with having nourished the real estate bubble with a policy of artificially low interest rates…

Alan Greenspan. - I find that extraordinary nonsense, revisionist history. Some critics ... label me to have encouraged Adjustable Rate sub-prime loans. That's completely false. One also reproaches me for having gone to the help of the investors, even of those which had taken enormous risks, each time there was a danger of crash. The problem is that, during such a time, the monetary policy must act quickly to lower the interest rates and to keep the system “liquid”. By doing this, we give the impression of [coming] to the rescue of people who took ill-considered risks - and it is indeed what we [do]! All the persons in charge for central bank will say to you that they are confronted with the same choice: to punish these people taking foolish risks and see the economy breaking down, or considering that a monetary policy protecting the economy and stability will profit to them - what is certainly regrettable - as it will profit with those which were careful, too.

The Oracle speaks. Yes, you can be too big to fail. And yes, free markets can be too free. And, of course, some will benefit in this denial of gravity and the other laws of financial physics. Yes, it's a minor inconvenient abberration in an otherwise pretty tale. But rest assured, according to Greenspan, we are still a merit-based system. Like Ayn Rand said. Like Milton Friedman got to prove, when allowed, and when unfettered. Like Brazil. Like, see you in 2012.