Happy New Year - a word on the ongoing global recession

I am not going to apologize for not updating this blog for a while. Period.

Lately I have thought a bit about this ongoing global recession we're experiencing. Norway isn't the worst affected country, but we're far from being in the clear.

There seems to be a large global consensus that the best approach to dealing with this is by bailing out just about anyone who asks for money. That, and everyone seems to be a Keynesian now (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynes).

To me this is deeply troublesome, because the bottom line is that if we follow this approach, we will just build up a new credit/real estate bubble. The real problem is excessive debt, and the encouragement of this by banks and politicians. We will never get out of this mess if we do not try to return to a society where (excessive) debt is discouraged.

I think we need to rethink how we let credit and real estate prices (well, actually, land prices) fuel the bubble, and we have to make the economy more resilient and less dependent on these two factors.

For a lot more reading on this subject, check out some of the links on this page (not all are relevant to the economy, but I think you're smart enough to manage).

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