PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE

This blog has been launched as the world's markets lurch downwards, undoing years of excess in months or weeks. The main current task for governments is to stop the slide and stabilise the situation. After over a year of hesitation, they have begun to address that task. We don't know how easy they will find it.
But once stabilisation has been achieved, the next problem will be to get the economy growing without repeating the speculative excesses of the past. Those excesses weren't necessary for economic growth, however much the PR men for the financial markets may claim they were. They were the outcome of a political philosophy and of greed. In many case the political philosophy was greed.
John Blunt was the genius behind the Sword Blade Company. And the Sword Blade Company was the genius behind the South Sea Bubble.
"Prevention Is Better" has succeeded in making contact with John Blunt from beyond the grave. In the coming weeks he promises to spell out the lessons he learned from the financial crisis of his day and how they apply to the modern world. All of the things which have caused so much trouble today were there in outline in the South Sea Company and its associated activities. It took something like 40 years to recover from that. We will see how long this latest disaster takes.