Tuesday, November 01, 2011
A matter of information
Tuned into Rush briefly this morning. Heard a caller saying "We can't blame Wall Street for our troubles. We have to blame We The People."
Incorrect, asshole.
There are some situations where you can blame ordinary consumers for falling into a scam. If you send a check to a Nigerian Prince expecting to get a share of the Prince's frozen wealth, you can be fully blamed for losing your own money. If you gamble in an Italian or Indian casino, you can be fully blamed for losing your own money. Everyone should understand those scams by now.
But until recently we didn't have commonly available information on the criminal nature of banking and stock markets. (i.e. Jewish casinos.) All media assured us that "values" would always go up and up and up and up and up without limit. There were a few Cassandras who tried to get the word out, but they were never allowed to speak on TV. There was no way to see what was happening, except by historical precedent. And that's always a bit shaky, because every now and then a situation really is unprecedented.
You can't blame ordinary Americans for following the vast majority of available info, in the same way that you can't blame North Koreans for believing Dear Leader Kim is giving them the best possible government.
North Korean radios are literally tuned to one frequency. They have no legal way to acquire outside info. Our situation wasn't quite that bad; we did have the Web; but even so, 99% of our available "frequencies" agreed with the established orthodoxy.
2008 changed all that. Now we do have provable information about the crime, though it's still woefully incomplete. Now you can blame an ordinary American who continues to buy stocks, or continues to run his life on a home equity loan.
[FWIW, I was cynical enough or alert enough to see part of the problem early. In the late '90s I read the overcomplicated novel Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, which gave an inside look at the way stocks were issued and manipulated. I heeded the warning and stayed out of the stock market, even though it was highly tempting at the time. But the bank side of the crime still took me by surprise in '08.] ¶ 11:33 AM
Incorrect, asshole.
There are some situations where you can blame ordinary consumers for falling into a scam. If you send a check to a Nigerian Prince expecting to get a share of the Prince's frozen wealth, you can be fully blamed for losing your own money. If you gamble in an Italian or Indian casino, you can be fully blamed for losing your own money. Everyone should understand those scams by now.
But until recently we didn't have commonly available information on the criminal nature of banking and stock markets. (i.e. Jewish casinos.) All media assured us that "values" would always go up and up and up and up and up without limit. There were a few Cassandras who tried to get the word out, but they were never allowed to speak on TV. There was no way to see what was happening, except by historical precedent. And that's always a bit shaky, because every now and then a situation really is unprecedented.
You can't blame ordinary Americans for following the vast majority of available info, in the same way that you can't blame North Koreans for believing Dear Leader Kim is giving them the best possible government.
North Korean radios are literally tuned to one frequency. They have no legal way to acquire outside info. Our situation wasn't quite that bad; we did have the Web; but even so, 99% of our available "frequencies" agreed with the established orthodoxy.
2008 changed all that. Now we do have provable information about the crime, though it's still woefully incomplete. Now you can blame an ordinary American who continues to buy stocks, or continues to run his life on a home equity loan.
[FWIW, I was cynical enough or alert enough to see part of the problem early. In the late '90s I read the overcomplicated novel Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, which gave an inside look at the way stocks were issued and manipulated. I heeded the warning and stayed out of the stock market, even though it was highly tempting at the time. But the bank side of the crime still took me by surprise in '08.] ¶ 11:33 AM
