If the balance has to fall on one side or the other, that of onerous government control, or complete market forces at play. My vote would go to the market.
Of course a balance is needed, but it looks more and more like the freedom to decide your own allocation of 401K dollars is going to be taken away. This is not progress, this is not balance.
Adults should have the freedom to invest their 401K money without the government coming up with a specific formula simply because of the "Enron hysteria". They took the risk and got burned. It happens all the time in the stock market. And they shouldn't be whining to congress or anyone else because they were too stupid, ignorant, or greedy to let it happen.
As I've said since the beginning of all this, if something illegal has happened, then the people involved should go to jail and pay the price. But, until and unless someone is found guilty of a crime, this episode will simply go down as a huge business failure.
Much of the business Enron lost will be rapidly scooped up by other companies. Their loss is another companies gain. Their incompetence has given a competitor an advantage, no doubt they will take advantage of it. Enron's lost jobs will eventually create jobs in another similar energy company, or give rise to a start up who can manage the business better, or more efficiently.
Free market capitalism takes a system approach to thinking in order understand the entire picture. "John lost his job and went on unemployment", or "Jane lost her 401K savings and went bankrupt", is only a small part of the causal effect of Enron's demise. Others have benefited from Enron's failure. Short traders made lots of money when Enron stock collapsed, Enron's competition picked up business, perhaps even hired more people then they had planned because of Enron.
Stopping at the tear-flowing stories the media loves to highlight, then making sweeping government policy changes based on them, is to lower our thinking to emotionalism alone. Freedom loving people must be willing to engage their minds, as well as their hearts in a pursuit for a reasonable balance between government rules, and free market economic principles. |
