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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (751350)	11/5/2013 7:21:52 PM
From: neolib	Respond to of 1576601

One example I have in mind is a friend who was a general contractor down around Portland area during the housing boom and bust. He was in his 30's hard working dude. Originally doing commissioned houses, one at a time, as the bubble built he went in whole hog (with family money backing him). Started doing spec houses and then buying land and doing smallish whole developments. Working 20 hr days, employing a sizeable crew, using all his talents to manage, plan and execute his business and making money hand over fist. Then it crashed and burned. Went bankrupt. Now the interesting thing is that all that work, intelligence and effort seems hugely constructive. Nobody could confuse it with breaking windows. But he and a large number of others doing the same thing caused the most severe recession in the USA since the Depression. How can this be? How much window smashing as random violence would need to happen in the USA to induce the same level of recession as all those beavering away building excess houses? It turns out that one cannot generalize from a single example (smashing one window or building one house) to the effect on an economy. Context is vital. The sign can actually flip for the same activity from one context to the next.