Apropos of the scary acrobatics of the market this week, Netxbook has a fascinating piece about Hyman Minsky, the Russian Jew whose views on the efficiency of capital markets have suddenly become popular (see here, here, here and here).
Mark Cohen writes:
According to economist Paul Samuelson, ninety-five percent of economists believe that the capital market is rational and efficient; Minsky fell in the other five percent. He did not believe that modern financial capital markets were stable and, perhaps more significantly, did not even believe they could be made stable. It was an insight that may have more to do with his Jewish upbringing than most people realize.
