Market Street

Some good stuff from John Cassidy's article "Rational-Irrationality."

He explains; The root problem is what might be termed "rational irrationality"- behavior that, on the individual level, is perfectly reasonable but that, when aggregated in the market place, produces calamity."

To me the key word is aggregated. It connotes that the system has to be already 'ill' for it to be aggregated. Under that context it's a telling indicator of the system.

John Maynard Keynes, one of the daddies of our system, put the economic game in terms we all can understand: "It is, so to speak, a game of Snap, of Old Maiden, of Musical Chairs-a pastime in which the victor who says snap neither too soon nor too late, who passes the Old Maiden to his neighbor before the game is over, who secures a chair for himself when the music stops."

We'll forgive Maynard for the sexist language. Even though most execs are men, so it's not too incorrect.