Tom Wright

The Devil Is in the Bad Bank's Details

So if incompetent (corrupt?) management, which has already put the screws to the shareholders gets removed and shareholders lose a bit more, that is bad but as long as shareholders get their dividends on their preferred or common shares (regardless of the reduced price of those shares) it is perfectly fine to keep incompetence in place at the top. No wonder our system has become so messed up.

Orwellian Finance: Is 1984 Happening in 2009?

Amen to much of what you have said. When we are more concerned about who will win in our fantasy leagues or video games than in why our leaders are pursuing certain agendas, we have indeed chosen ignorance as in "bliss." Unfortunately, that does not make us much different from the mass of people anywhere else in the world who truly believe they have little or no control over what their leaders do or plot or agree to and they are right in this belief.


On Jan 19 09:28 AM patio wrote:

> The real problem is very simple, it is us. We actually have, theoretically,
> a perfect democracy. Everyone gets to vote, we are free to rise as
> high as we can, live how and where we want, etc. we are all dealt
> different cards at birth, but truly have life. liberty, and the pursuit
> of happiness. Pursuit, not guarantee.
> We not only get to vote for the government we wish, but our dollars
> vote every day for the type of stores we want,programs we want, media
> we want, etc. Our malls, our towns, our movies, our everything is
> a reflection of the aggregate us. Decry fast food, the biased media,
> our obesity, our poor education, corrupt politiicans if you will-
> we could fix all of it overnight.
> But we in the aggragate have chosen ignorance( not stupidity, " ya
> can't fix stupid ). No, we can quote sports trivia, who Britney is
> screwing this week, who the Idol judge is, but don't have clue one
> about who our congressmen are, what they do, how it affects us.

>
> We spend more time grilling each candidate for a janitor job, than
> trying to understand where our trillions go. Sure, the game is set
> up to make us make us not want to know, but the information is readily
> available.
> The technolgy that Orwell feared could actually be the saviour, if
> we used it, We have instant access to every opinion imaginable on
> any topic. We can send e-mails to our congressmen. We can e-mail
> any media, and tell them clean up the bias, or we trun you off, and
> tell your sponsors sayonara.
> WE THE PEOPLE HAVE ALL THE POWER, IF WE ONLY CHOSE TO UNDERSTAND
> THE ISSUES AND USE THE POWER.
> But we in the aggregate chose ignorance, and all the various new
> opiates of the masses ( TV; sports; video games- anything but paying
> attention to how our trillions are mis-applied and stolen ).
> I have seen the enemy, and it is us.

Orwellian Finance: Is 1984 Happening in 2009?

While I have little doubt that excessive government programs do impede on the rights of much of the populace, I also have no doubt that left unchecked, a portion of that populace displays venality so destructive that it makes little difference whether it is government or individuals doing the harm. The Madoff, Abramoff, Enron and Worldcom cases are evidence of that. Further, how we can assume that unemployment would have somehow been much lower than it was if the New Deal programs had not existed is speculation given the situation that actually existed and using a 104 billion GDP 1929 figure instead show GDP was stagnant during the New Deal years is intellectually dishonest. A better figure would have been the 1933 figure at the start of the New Deal.