The media has made a big to-do about the Rick Santelli "rant" on CNBC recently. The first thing that anyone needs to know about the media is that it is never intentionally meant to be informative or helpful in a way that affects their lives in a meaningful and positive way. What the media IS meant for is selling products and controlling information to serve the interests of those who run it. Any instance of the contrary is unintended or accidental. That said, let us all please avoid the fantasy that this "rant" we all witnessed was a moment of truth slipping through the cracks or that it was anything other than a staging point for controlled and marginalized debate. This particular type of propaganda always reminds me of a conflict one might have with someone who is completely wrong or crazy yet some incense-burning, age of Aquarius conscious wacka-doodle floats out of the woodworks and insists that "there are two sides to every story and the truth is somewhere in the middle". That type of Bazooka Joe wrapper psychology is not only useless in most of our daily lives but dangerous in areas of public policy and discourse given its context.
I'm not asserting that in many cases of conflict there aren't shared responsibilities for negative outcomes, because most of the time there are, but truth is truth either absolutely or not at all. The fnord message in this rant story is "Yes there were some greedy wall street speculators like Madoff who are to blame, but lazy and foolish Americans who instigated the housing crash are just as much to blame if not more, so let's find a happy medium, let's find the 'truth in the middle'. And oh by the way, the financial system itself is fine.".
So again it's bad players and not bad rules themselves that get the blame in our national “debates”. Never mind the Federal Reserve system and fractional reserve banking mechanisms that cause inflation and create boom/bust cycles, or bank and corporate insiders who egregiously mismanage their businesses then receive massive bailouts from public dollars and do it again and again. Maybe it's none of these institutions of systematic pillaging of the public wealth that have operated with no accountability for decades, maybe it's the few hundred million in bad mortgage loans that were issued in the last few years, or the next door neighbor who wanted that extra bathroom. I know, let's stand around the water cooler and debate these two false opposites and see if we can find a truthful happy medium, let's do that because we are sensible and because we are so well-informed.
Robert Ferguson
I'm not asserting that in many cases of conflict there aren't shared responsibilities for negative outcomes, because most of the time there are, but truth is truth either absolutely or not at all. The fnord message in this rant story is "Yes there were some greedy wall street speculators like Madoff who are to blame, but lazy and foolish Americans who instigated the housing crash are just as much to blame if not more, so let's find a happy medium, let's find the 'truth in the middle'. And oh by the way, the financial system itself is fine.".
So again it's bad players and not bad rules themselves that get the blame in our national “debates”. Never mind the Federal Reserve system and fractional reserve banking mechanisms that cause inflation and create boom/bust cycles, or bank and corporate insiders who egregiously mismanage their businesses then receive massive bailouts from public dollars and do it again and again. Maybe it's none of these institutions of systematic pillaging of the public wealth that have operated with no accountability for decades, maybe it's the few hundred million in bad mortgage loans that were issued in the last few years, or the next door neighbor who wanted that extra bathroom. I know, let's stand around the water cooler and debate these two false opposites and see if we can find a truthful happy medium, let's do that because we are sensible and because we are so well-informed.
Robert Ferguson
Believe it or not I am keeping my fingers crossed in hopes of the collapse. I think it will be like giving birth. The labor will suck but the pay off sweet. I often wonder how money became the new god. And how people became detached from financial management on the local and international scene. Its almost as if a spell has been cast on the public at large.I'll call it.........The zombie slave, believe what the government tells you spell........
ReplyDeleteI think the only to break this spell is the collapse. I think I read that in the alchemists spell guide or something..LMFAO...
The collapse will do wonders. And we have front row seats.....
Fritz
You probably already heard of this, but Jon Stewart was talking about this same thing; how the wall street gamblers used our money to ruin the economy and how they got payed tax dollars to do it.
ReplyDeletehttp://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/jon-stewart-creams-jim-cramer-daily-sho
Good blog by the way, I like the style.