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From Simon Johnson and James Kwak, on whether the financial meltdown of 2008 was basically a gigantic accident caused by mistaken models and excess optimism:
It was as if the government first repealed the laws against littering, eliminated all public sanitation services, and subsidized the consumption of bananas . . . and then the global economy slipped on a banana peel.
I remember trying once to come up with a similar analogy that started off with repealing all the speed limit laws and getting rid of the highway patrol, but I never quite finished thinking it through. In the meantime, this one works.
