{"id":35229,"date":"2022-02-04T21:52:13","date_gmt":"2022-02-05T03:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=35229"},"modified":"2022-03-31T14:34:59","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T19:34:59","slug":"shearing-the-bumbling-investor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2022\/02\/04\/shearing-the-bumbling-investor\/","title":{"rendered":"Shearing The Bumbling Investor?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Josh Barro shares <a href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2022\/01\/12\/so-why-have-confidence-in-cryptocurrencies-ctd\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">my viewpoint<\/a>, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.joshbarro.com\/p\/why-i-hate-cryptocurrency\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">far more articulately<\/a>, <em>on cryptocurrencies<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>While I hate the aesthetics of crypto, my complaint here is not principally aesthetic. As someone who is in general more favorable to the social value of finance than a lot of commentators these days \u2014 especially on the left but sometimes on the right too \u2014 I want finance to be useful, serious, and furthering the production of useful products and services in the real economy.<\/p>\n<p>I want banks lending for the construction of new buildings; equity markets making it possible for the most promising companies to raise funds to build useful products; bond markets making cheap and efficient financing available for public and private activities that will support payment of interest on the bonds.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/article\/jerome-powell-federal-reserve-profile.html\" rel=\"\">I was a big champion of the Fed\u2019s actions to rescue the financial system in spring 2020<\/a>\u00a0because I know a robust and liquid financial system isn\u2019t just something people on Wall Street like \u2014 it\u2019s something that makes it possible to get a mortgage, use a credit card, remain employed at a company, and generally enjoy all the things made possible by a modern economy.<\/p>\n<p>And I am concerned that\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/fact-tank\/2021\/11\/11\/16-of-americans-say-they-have-ever-invested-in-traded-or-used-cryptocurrency\/\" rel=\"\">tens of millions of Americans<\/a>\u00a0investing in a stupid market with no such thing as fundamental value \u2014 and where prices should not keep going up and up and up, though I\u2019ve grown weary of saying that and watching them do so anyway \u2014 is likely to lead to significant financial dislocation and reduced trust in the financial system when a lot of them lose their shirts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Which sort of reminds me of the bursting of the Internet bubble in 2000. Or 2001. Whenever. A lot of people lost money when that pus-filled balloon <del>finely<\/del> finally blew up, including me.<\/p>\n<p>Barro knows more about finance than I do. Go read him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Josh Barro shares my viewpoint, but far more articulately, on cryptocurrencies: While I hate the aesthetics of crypto, my complaint here is not principally aesthetic. As someone who is in general more favorable to the social value of finance than a lot of commentators these days \u2014 especially on the \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2022\/02\/04\/shearing-the-bumbling-investor\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35229"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35603,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35229\/revisions\/35603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}