stockholders can sue managers for exceptional incompetence. For example, if a bank were to leverage itself to its limits to place bets on soy futures and the bets went south, then the shareholders would have a case that the bank managers had been extraordinarily irresponsible (not just a mistake, but utterly reckless)and might have a case against them as individuals.

Similarly, if the execs had just chosen to ignore explicit and detailed warnings from the Fed chair (not disagree with, but completely ignore) they could face personal liability when their companies went bankrupt as a result. I'll let the jury decide this one.

I don't know what evidence Randall is referring to, but I was making a very simple point. If we don't have a desire to consume more than it is a very simple matter to take the benefits of productivity growth in the form of shorter work hours.

If productivity rises by 2.0 percent, this means that instead of getting 2.0 percent more pay (which we may all save) we instead work 2 percent less. This could mean having one week a year of additional vacation or perhaps an hour less of work a week.

If the problem we face is secular stagnation due to not spending enough, this should solve the problem. The math works back where I come from.

Okay, so if the government will commit itself to keeping the mortgage rate at 4 percent for the next six decades, come hell or high water, then I'm 100 percent with Brad. But somehow, I don't think that will be the case.

My guess is that we will get 4 percent mortgage rates until the economy recovers and the dollar falls and inflation picks up. Then we see mortgage rates rise to 6 percent, 7 percent, maybe even 8 percent. Who knows, maybe we'll get back to the double-digit rates we enjoyed in the 80s.

Then house prices plunge and all the people who bought homes when the rates were 4 percent get nailed. Then all the economists who thought this was great policy tell us that "virtually nobody" could have imagined that mortgage interest rates could rise, arghhhhhhhhhhhhh!

I hate reruns.

We aren't that much stupider than the folks in England. It is taxed at the point where the trade is made. They been doing it for many decades. It's simple enough for a Wall Street boy to understand.

The key to paying little taxes is to avoid frequent trading. That would be very simple for almost everyone. (I assume your daily re-balancing doesn't require selling the whole portfolio.) Since there has been a sharp decline in transactions costs over the last three decades, this tax would just bring costs back to their mid-80s levels.