Are We Being Scammed?

When I turned on my computer and saw that equity traders had driven S&P futures sharply higher in Sunday night trading on the heels of today's Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac "rescue," I immediately thought of the following Bertrand Russell quote:

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

Regardless, since most of the financial blogosphere is already providing blanket coverage of the fraud being perpetrated on taxpayers by the Wall Street-Washington nexus, I thought it would be interesting to highlight a few of the other scams our "leadership" is currently involved with (which stock market investors, of course, blindly accept as the unvarnished truth).

Below is a Financial Times commentary by Rob Arnott, chairman of Research Affiliates, "Government Lies and Squishy Ethics," that gives it straight.

Comments

[john s. gordon:]

my grandchildren will not enjoy having to pay for all this incompetence by so-called 'professional management'.
> jack

2008 Sep 08 08:15 AM

[Kelly Liebe...:]

Yes, we are being scammed. Higher taxes in the form of bailouts for financial criminals. Wall St. can make lemonade out of lemons because money is to be made in markets moving in ANY direction... As long as the market is moving these guys are busy ...
Meanwhile, the printers are working overtime to print all the money to fund all these bailouts, military expenditures, debt etc...
After 6 months what will a dollar really be worth? Most importantly, what will other countries think the dollar will be worth? I am bullish on Gold and Silver because I think our dollar is being scammed!

2008 Sep 08 08:47 AM

[User 95857:]

William Butler Yeats wrote in The Second Coming

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

2008 Sep 08 08:57 AM

[John Lounsbury:]

May I offer another thought: The intelligent are aware of what they don't know and the stupid are unaware.

2008 Sep 08 10:02 AM

[The Realist:]

Can anyone get me a good estimate on when the US will collapse. Hopefully I will already be dead by then.

2008 Sep 08 11:30 AM

[carey_jim:]

I've always wondered why the world watched with indifference as Europe marched toward World War II.

Now I know.

2008 Sep 08 03:12 PM

[brianoh:]

The asset inflation is obviously the result of the printing of massive liquidity at give-away rates (lower than inflation). The big question is when and how it will all end. It may not end. After all, all of that "wealth" created up to 2001 has to go somewhere. The fact that US stocks have had a negative return since 2001 obviously indicates that they were massively overpriced. Trouble is the Fed controls the fawcet and doesn't know a drought from a flood. The Fed-Bank partnership is little different to the concept of feudalism - the consumers being the serfs.

2008 Sep 08 06:48 PM

[User 30121:]

Scammed is easily the softest explanation. We are being screwed. Hey, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac CEOs is getting a 30 MILLION BONUS for being sooooooooo efficient! Isn't that wonderful!

2008 Sep 08 07:06 PM