And at the same time in America, looked at from outside compared with my own country, spiritual values are very important and are, indeed, to my mind are on the rise. In my country spiritual values are declining. Well, obviously we have different views, but take another very important issue, which I m stressing, and that is that markets are inherently unstable, particularly financial markets, and maintaining stability ought to be an objective of government policy. And that is to some extent recognized now internally in the domestic economy, but you now have a global economy and there is no global supervision of markets, and I m afraid that this is a very unstable and dangerous situation. Well, I agree with you that stability is an important value, and I think that the important role of governments, particularly central banks, but other elements of government, should be to try to achieve stability and try to modulate fluctuations.
Markets can easily overshoot.
Now you see the theory, the underlying theory doesn t recognize this. The prevailing wisdom is that markets tend towards equilibrium, and that s a dangerous fallacy. You know, economists tend to think of them as, you know, the be all and end all is the term again, and, in fact, they have all kinds of imperfections. I m being more specific. But they are not corresponding to what happens in the real world.