Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Enduring Economic Lessons of the Past 10 Years

FINANCIAL WISDOM AND SANITY AT THE INOCULATED INVESTOR.

It's long and somewhat laborious reading, but well worth the efforts for keeping our feet solidly on fiscal ground and learning from our many mistakes of the past decade. I agree with most everything he says. A sampling follows but hopefully we'll all read the whole thing:

As the ‘naughties’ (what a perfectly descriptive name for the 2000-2009 period) come to a somewhat anti-climactic close, it is important for those of us in the investment community to take stock of what new lessons have been learned, what immutable laws have been reinforced, and what changes in policy, strategy and execution need to occur in order to avoid a repeat of the booms and busts of the last decade. The reason I think such an analysis is critical is that I do not believe most investors are cognizant enough of the dangers lurking in the world’s financial markets. Memories are very short and despite suffering through a number of serious market downturns over the last 10 years, I worry that we have already started a snowball rolling that has the potential to cause even more lasting damage than the dot com bubble or the real estate bubble and subsequent financial collapse. Therefore, it may be true that only by understanding the past can we hope to avoid such a fate.

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