To a degree markets are imaginary and I'm always interested in the ways that people correct imaginary failures.
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To a degree markets are imaginary and I'm always interested in the ways that people correct imaginary failures.
Here is a neat example from The Great Depression: penny auctions of farms
Basically there were many farm foreclosures but if you thought as a city slicker you'd go buy up some farms you might have another thing coming.
Farmers would present a surly mob at the auction and ... explain that bids would stay under a few pennies. So the farmer could "buy" the farm back.
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To a degree markets are imaginary and I'm always interested in the ways that people correct imaginary failures.
Here is a neat example from The Great Depression: penny auctions of farms
Basically there were many farm foreclosures but if you thought as a city slicker you'd go buy up some farms you might have another thing coming.
Farmers would present a surly mob at the auction and ... explain that bids would stay under a few pennies. So the farmer could "buy" the farm back.
This was basically a big protest with the subtext of violence at the bank's auction.
And in general displacing people from land they work is unpopular bloody and hard, so without the government helping them the banks and outside buyers had to just... let it go.
Another example of "imaginary markets" is the way the Federal reserve acted after the market crash in 1987. There was an effort to "just put things back as they were"
It kind of worked in the US at least.
