Scapegoating

Professors Gary Becker and Richard Posner at the University of Chicago discuss the benefits and risks of financial speculation in a shaky economy. Becker says, “Speculators have never been popular, and they have never been as unpopular as they are in the United States today. Increasingly they are blamed for the economic crisis. Probably they should be rewarded for making the crisis less grave than it would otherwise have been.”