"We Will Control the Market"

And there you have it, really. (h/t Protein Wisdom)

For 100 years these hyper-instructed ne'er-do-wells have been telling that, given sufficient money and authority, they'll get everything under control. That the business cycle is theirs to command. That the incentives and motivations of millions of human hearts could be perfectly shaped by legislation. Despite watching their house of  jokers collapse around them, they believe it still.

Monty, at Ace:

The “market” is not a thing to be managed, or a process to be controlled. The market is just an aspect of the natural world, working on the creatures who move through it. Merkel’s comment reflects the combination of arrogance and ignorance that is at the root of so many of our economic problems.

Yes. And the only thing wrong with this statement is that every GOP candidate is not shouting it from the rooftops, all the time. Every quarter the GDP is "unexpectedly" less than envisioned, and yet the premise of progressive politics -- that a learned technocracy can manage the wealth of the land better than the people -- remains a truism in the minds of too many people. They will continue to believe it until the bottom drops out.

Whereupon, they will eulogize their fallacies as "noble".