Adam Smith

Adam Smith was the dreamer of the metaphor of the "The Invisible Hand". He envisioned the ultimate balancer in society, an invisible hand which ensured that everyone working according to fulfill their own innermost needs, interests, desires, or dreams, would in-effect promote the good of the society at large as well. He wanted to believe that the maximum happiness of the each individual can be aggregated to get the maximum happiness of society.

I do believe he himself did not realize how real the invisible hand could be. That even in the absence of an effective and efficient regulatory system to ensure that the more powerful players in the economy do not exploit the less powerful ones, the invisible hand will ensure that balance reappears in society. The current crisis is an example of the existence this "Invisible Hand" ... or of "Divine Justice" as Warren Buffet calls the crisis.

Why is this "Divine Justice"? Isn't that a sadistic view of looking at the world, with so much unemployment and pain right now? Maybe it is. But balance is the fundamental truth of the world. And any system that tries to pursue a strategy of imbalance, over-spending, over-leverage etc etc, will have to bear pain when the "Invisible Hand of Balance and Equilibrium" enforces itself. The means is painful if the force of imbalance is stubborn, as was the case with the Mamomths of Wall Street.

Applying what the Buddha said: the cause of imbalance in the case of the markets is incomplete knowledge about the markets. Now that we have learnt about the incomplete knowledge of Wall Street and taken its leaders down from the pedestals of the Omniscient Finance Wizards who we can trust with all our money, we are in a position to move toward more balanced financial strategies... if we are wise enough to follow a balanced path this time. Time will tell what the people of the world decide for themselves the next time around: Balance of Imbalance? And thus time will tell whether the "Invisible Hand" decides to bless us or to punish us the next time around.