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JPMorgan, the Volcker Rule, and the Extreme Brevity of Financial
Memory  Posted: Updated:  Financial crises are a lot like
childbirth -- they both involve a lot of pain and end up costing
you a lot of money. But, after a while, you forget about all the
negatives and are ready to do it again. Of course, with
childbirth you at least get something positive out of it. In my
own case, I'd forgotten enough about the downside of having a
baby to do it again two years later -- without an epidural. (My
older daughter just graduated from college this week -- time
flies!) This propensity to forget, so useful when it comes to
having babies, is incredibly destructive when it comes to our
economy. So why do we do it?  In 1990, John Kenneth Galbraith
tried to answer this vexing question in his book, A Short
History of Financial Euphoria. Using the 1987 market crash as
his launch pad, Galbraith looks at the history of financial
bubbles -- and the subsequent and inevit