There are also regulated markets. Prices are controlled by buyers, sellers and sometimes the government, in extreme cases. Government does its best to ensure that false and misleading information is eliminated from market transactions. Government, with market cooperation, simplifies documentation, eliminates gambles that risk the wealth of the nation and clarifies the more ordinary risks faced by any market participant.
A mixed market falls somewhere in between free and highly regulated. Prices are set by buyer and seller without government involvement. Government regulation OR industry self-regulation fills the same “truth in selling” role as it does in a regulated market. Mixed markets are simply a more relaxed form of regulated market. The current system in the United States is a mixed market.
So called “free marketeers” like President Bush would have us believe that false, misleading and purposefully obscure information played no role in the collapse of our economy. Not so.
A host of obscure gambling schemes, such as hedge funds, destroyed our economy in, to say the least, a criminally negligent way. It is time that Congress and the public reject the unfettered “free market” idea and embrace, more fully, a mixed market concept that eliminates false, misleading, and purposefully obscure information. This does not mean socialism.
Embracing a mixed market means eliminating the recklessness that has hurt all of us. It does not impose undue restriction on those who want to risk money on certain transparent types of market gambles. A mixed market with much improved information, understanding, morality and regulation means protection for all of us.
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