Recently Mark J. Kamstra of York University and Robert J. Shiller of Yale proposed a new way of investing in the US government. This new method is essentially like buying a share of the economy. This would give the government another way to gain capital and stimulate growth. This uses a sort of voucher policy tool. The interesting aspect of this is (not mentioned in the article) is that if this sort of investment into the economy starts picking up, then more pressure will likely be put on the government to start thoroughly auditing it's institutions and making the information public. This type of transparency would greatly improved the efficiency and overall legitimacy of the program and the US government.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/buying-shares-in-the-u-s-economy/?ref=business
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I think that this is kind of neat. This reminds me of wiki-leaks though. Something of this magnitude would make so much information available that no one would be able to understand it. How many people have read all of the wiki-leaks leaks? I think that this would cause very slanted news to influence the economic sector. Between that and "buying shares of the economy" I feel that this too closely ties the private and government sectors of society. They all work together but this seems like the first step to making government private and I do not like it. A stool needs three legs.
ReplyDeleteI think this idea is very cool. I believe that this idea could get a lot more people of all ages more involved in our economy that would never have seen it as something of interest to them. An investment in the economy would in most cases also bring light to institutions that never got the attention that originally was expected of them. The major problem that I see is, what is the return to those who invest? What if the economy doesn't do very well, and then people start to pull their money out - would that just make the economy worse off? The idea is good, but i'm not so sure what the benefits to the invester's really is, or if it is really worth the risk. Another question to ask is, what if the economy gets worse, will people start to revolt against the institutions that caused the downfall?
ReplyDeleteAjay Bohra