If you ever wanted to see propaganda in action, check Time magazine’s list of the 25 people responsible for the financial collapse upon us:
“Twenty Five People To Blame For the Financial Crisis.”
Comment:
Where to begin?
For starters: I’m not a fan of “Top 40s” listings except for the Top Forties, i.e., for popular trends, celeb fashion faux, Red Book girlie advice and such like. At ostensibly news-heavy publications (then again, perhaps that’s rather an ambitious term for a coffee-table glossy like Time) you’d expect at least a pretense at deep thinking. Apparently not….
Second: Why 25? There’s so much blame to go around that you either make a list of hundreds (how about the Misfortune Five Hundred?) or whittle it down to the Big Ten…
Third: We expected Bob Rubin to be given a free pass, since the media has always had a peculiar love affair with this slippery guy, and we expected the knee-jerk over-emphasis on Republicans, but George Bush is more responsible than Alan Greenspan (Fed Chairman under Clinton and Bush) ??
Whatever you think about Bush, there’s one thing quite clear – the man was not an intellectual powerhouse…nor was he a shrewd tactician.
Do you really think he was anything more than a mouthpiece…..and probably a fairly sincere mouthpiece…when it came to economic and financial issues?
Now, before I venture any further analysis, I want some honest reader response here. Since I am being brave and taking the personal and financial hits that go with public bloggery, you dear readers, must do your part as good citizens and raise your hands (and voices) in public. Tell me what you think this list means and how and why it was cooked up.
And here I give you an original rajivanation:
Not with silence and stealth are republics defended – but so they are lost
In any criminal enterprise, there will be a subset who are the designated patsies — those who will take the blame if and when the scam is blown. Some of the patsies, like Bush, are simply dupes, others, like the founder of Countrywide, were the ones caught holding the bag. What they all have in common is that ultimately they will be sent into a comfortable retirement as their reward for taking the heat and not fingering the primary actors.
Time has simply identified the patsies for us.
I’ve seen that list too, and was pretty thoroughly disgusted with it. Including “American consumers” as one of the entities is not only misleading, but very low. Not all American consumers fell into the spending frenzy and/or housing and investment bubbles that federal policies encouraged.
But if the list-makers are willing to play fast and loose like that, an obvious omission is every Congressweasel (apologies to the wild kind) who voted to dismantle Glass Steagal and other regulations. Similarly, they should’ve included all the regulators and bureaucrats who were supposed to be enforcing the laws and turned blind eyes and deaf ears to what was going on. Mind you, in saying that I am not saying that the law was good (or necessary); I’m simply pointing out what many libertarians know all too well—the law is most often a window dressing that the rich and powerful can skirt.
It seems to me that the list focuses overmuch on those who exploited the causes (like Madoff and some of the others listed), rather than the causers themselves (with some exceptions). Why isn’t Nixon here, for taking the FRN off the gold standard, for example?
I think the list was cooked up to satisfy those who want to point fingers, and to provide a pretense of deep thought and/or self analysis (that’s why “American consumers” were included). As to the latter, it completely misses the mark. It is the lack of self-control, and avarice that led to too many individuals engaging in dishonest transactions, both legal and illegal. That includes the people on both sides of the desk when the liar’s loan mortgage papers were filed, for example.
Exactly right, Sunni.
Nixon is right.
Clever man, but dead wrong on some things.
But you know, I don’t think Madoff was just a clever crook.
I think the Primex trading pool holds some dark secrets that will show that Madoff was only among equals and the designated patsy, in all likelihood.
Folks like Barney Frank, who promoted the housing bubble from within Congress, certainly are missing from the list and probably ought to be near the top.
More importantly, quibbling about who is and isn’t on the list and their relative rankings is fundamentally an exercise in misdirection. Basically what Time is telling us is this: there are a whole slew of people responsible for this mess. Don’t even try to get to the bottom of this, it is all too complicated. It is a distraction from the search for the fundamental cause(s) of this disaster.
Barney Frank, for sure.
But I do think it means something that the list is partisan and focused on those who exploited the derivatives free-for- all, while giving a pass to those connected to Goldman Sachs (a contributor to Frank, by the way) who continue to be in power – Tim Geithner being the glaring example.