Re: A Lesson From 1987,Unlearned by Wall St.
Dear Sirs:
Mr. Norris’ discussion of the role played by the then novice use of high speed computer trading in the 1987 stock market crash is merely a side show to the real unlearned lesson. The real unlearned lesson of the 1987 crash was the role played by the Greenspan Fed, which pumped massive amounts of liquidity into the market, short circuiting the cleansing process, and reigniting the inflationary bubble. This became the template of central bank policy everywhere–whenever the stock market gets jittery, lower the interest rate by any means possible to prevent stock prices from falling. The result has been ever shorter and more extreme boom/bust cycles, with higher and higher injections of fiat money producing less and less result. The U.S. and most of the world has built an unsustainable capital structure that is completely out of tune with the wishes of those who provide the financing–the savers. It is this mismatch of savings with investment that eventually will cause a collapse that no amount of fiat monetary injections can stop. Patrick Barron
