Alan G, the banker’s man
Cut the rate and away he ran
The books were cooked,
The thieves have booked,
Now Ben Bernanke’s
On the hook…
I’ve decided that treating this whole business as a tragedy/calamity doesn’t do it justice. Ridicule, taunting, and scorn are the proper responses.
And some of that needs to be directed at our own selves.
We’ve lived comfortably in a society where “branding” and “image” are everything – substance is nothing.
We’ve lived comfortably with a two-tier education where brilliant people are routinely overlooked in favor of empty suits with friends in high places.
We were comfortable with millions of people all over the world subsidizing “free markets”..
We were comfortable with the morals and manners of the gangsters who are our elites, as long as the pendulum was swinging our way.
Now that it’s stopped and hit us, we’ve changed our tune.
“We’ve lived comfortably with a two-tier education where brilliant people are routinely overlooked in favor of empty suits with friends in high places.” – To which I’d add, “comfortable credentials.”
Nepotism is safe because it carries loyalty. Requiring strangers to have official and respected credentials (university diplomas) is safe because if the individual turns out to be an idiot or an asshole (or both), nobody can be blamed. How could we know?
What we lack is judgment and balls. Both have been bred and educated out of us, because the usefulness of independent thinking man is more than offset by an everpresent danger that he (she) will tear down the edifice of mediocrity with the cruel sword that is indivisible from the species.
You made me rethink a couple of points in what I wrote.
I’m not sure that “meritocracy” is any more “merit”-based than “family ties” and nepotism were. Is the current class of technocrats any more qualified than if it had been appointed on the basis of blood lines. Probably not…
And yes- no one wants to actually develop judgment. It’s safer to use “brands” – they excuse us from thinking why we need them.
How much brand-quality do we need from a box of crackers, for e.g.? Would we be able to (1) assess the quality for ourselves (2) judge how much quality we needed and why and (3) figure out how much we ought to pay for the level of quality we wanted?
I doubt it….
A ditty from a previous era; somehow it still applies:
Now I lay me down to sleep-
My life and limb may Hoover keep,
And may no Coast Guard cutter shell
This little home I love so well.
May no dry agent, shooting wild,
Molest mine wife and infant child,
Or searching out some secret still,
Bombard my home to maim and kill.
When dawn succeeds the gleaming stars,
May we devoid of wounds and scars,
Give thanks we didn’t fall before
The shots in Prohibition’s War.
—The Patriot’s Prayer, Arthur Lippman
I must look up Arthur Lippman –
it’s clever.
Not much on the interent about him, Lila, but a pretty good chrestomathy can be found here:
http://www.philsp.com/homeville/fmi/s1357.htm
I remembered some of the lines from someone reciting it at a gathering of libertarian I attended more than 20 yrs ago, then located the poem by googling it.
Libertarian bashes must be more fun than I thought…!
By the way, any thoughts on a magazine theme for wordpress? I’ve been trying several and am not happy so far.
I want something thats’s customizable from the admin panel.No code writing…
Should be able to alter the header with a jpg upload.
Any thoughts? I’d like two columns and more of a grid lay out so it’s easier to read comments and interact.
Those were your suggestions, I recall
Lila
I like Warren G. Harding. Part of the reason I’m drawn to him is because if the establishment historians and economists hate him, he must be worth paying attention to and otherwise likeable.
Following is a rather amazing quotation from his acceptance speech, in which, facing a post-war economic collapse, he praises deflation and essentially doing nothing (which worked, btw). Seems to me this would make for a time-relevant blog post:
“The economic mechanism is intricate and its parts interdependent, and has suffered the shocks and jars incident to abnormal demands, credit inflations, and price upheavals. The normal balances have been impaired, the channels of distribution have been clogged, the relations of labor and management have been strained. We must seek the readjustment with care and courage. Our people must give and take. Prices must reflect the receding fever of war activities. Perhaps we never shall know the old levels of wages again, because war invariably readjusts compensations, and the necessaries of life will show their inseparable relationship, but we must strive for normalcy to reach stability. All the penalties will not be light, nor evenly distributed. There is no way of making them so. There is no instant step from disorder to order. We must face a condition of grim reality, charge off our losses and start afresh. It is the oldest lesson of civilization. I would like government to do all it can to mitigate; then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved. No altered system will work a miracle. Any wild experiment will only add to the confusion. Our best assurance lies in efficient administration of our proven system.”
A system proven to blow up and collapse time after time.
A system that values human labor so cheaply that people have to work 12 to 16 hour days just to make ends meet (a task that many people have given up), or go into hock so deeply to “the company store” that they will never get out of debt short of losing all their possessions.
Meanwhile, the people who created the central banking/debt-money system worry about which of their 6 houses they may have to sell.
I don’t think a system that is driving people to such despair that they wind up killing themselves and sometimes many others is very funny.
Especially when a far better alternative is so easily envisioned.
I’m pretty disappointed that you have not seen fit to discuss the ideas upon which my plan is based (nor any of the alternatives that you previously mentioned) at all. Also curious why you never responded at all to my email from last week. alan
I posted the above before I saw your answer on the other thread. Hard to keep track of all of them.