Rational-Emotive Behaviourism

In a recent article by Paul Krugman, the acronym CAPM popped up. But what Paul missed in describing the cycles of our species' bartering behaviour is REBT. Look at us and some of the trade we conduct:

• Financing movies by Michael Moore, knowing his anti-business message sells well in a business marketplace
• A paper by Raghuram Rajan, going against the grain while no one listens
  
• Rising unemployment-based factionalism
• $1 DVDs at Redbox
• Brazilian hyperinflation forgotten quickly
• Zero-interest policies based on questionable logic
• Keynesian federal intervention/spending policy
• Commercial real estate collapsing further?
• Rising unemployment and falling job cutbacks playing like Bach masterpieces
• Rising world temperatures and rotating cold/drought spots
  

We keep treating economics like a science but should we? It's more like placing bets after the race has been won. We all look like winners. If, as Krugman asserts, experts sell when idiots buy and vice versa, aren't both groups reacting to each other? Who is really the idiot and who is really the expert? Herding or flocking behaviour still dominates.

Pardon me while I get a good laugh out of me. I am just this one cell in the world body. I am blind to what goes on in the pancreas or the little finger of the left hand. Someone is tickling our feet and I cannot help but giggle along with the rest of us. I take input from nearby cells who've pushed fluid in my direction and now I'm processing them to keep myself alive.

We will watch "experts" perform their post-mortem autopsies on the current situation and praise them for their insight and ingenuity. Ptooie! Sorry, I had to hack that hairball out of my mouth and I've still got this bad taste fouling my breath.

Rational or rationing. Use whatever words you want to perform formal analyses. We'll see governments go back to regulation policies that will lock down the locations of the hoards of money in repositories around the world, slowing down the shift of production resources. "Hey, who opened the barn door? Dagnabbit, Chester, them horses ran over to Bubba's ranch and his greener pastures. We ain't gonna be able to get the feed to the mill this year! Guess it's just gonna rot in the silos. Think we can eat fat rodents for protein?"

Warren Buffett wants U.S.-produced goods to be bought by other countries to balance the import/export business in this country. Meanwhile, how do we pour more government money into local economies so we can join the rest of the national governments in pumping up consumers' confidence in buying retail goods?

How many $1 DVD rentals (formerly priced at $5) does it take for another person to buy a $60k vehicle? How many $60k vehicles does it take for another person to buy a $1M home (a "one-quart ketchup" home formerly priced at $2M)?

See, it's all about rational-emotive behaviour, not economic theories. How many people desire a $60k vehicle versus how many can (or cannot) afford and then buy one? Throw out the economists. Bring me good poker players - they're the best economic predictors I know. I don't want physicists-turned-bankers. I want people who play the game in real-time, not in computer simulations or industry conference presentations.

Give me a banker who's willing to throw good money at risk-takers. The horde who hoard get thrown into the silo with the rest of the rotting crop. We can pave all the new roads and build new bridges that we want but if nobody's driving the highways, who cares what they look like? I want people willing to risk their secure jobs and salaries on a Toyota Prius and a Hummer H3 to put in their resized, solar-powered mini-McMansion and a banker who'll make a loan package that works for them. Just don't let them drink and text behind the wheel and you've made me a happy man.

Call this the Great Recession or the Lesser Depression - I don't care - say that it helped cut down on energy usage, too, while you're at it. But take your theories and climb back into your ivory towers. I want practical solutions. Pragmatism. Folks able to afford a new truck on their farm. City dwellers able to support a new chef's menu. Ludacris giving away cars because the government's got its head on backwards. I don't want hot air heating up the room unless you've found a way to turn human breath into a moneymaking heat pump exchange system - then we'll talk away because you're finally awake. See, I'm easy to work with.