Wednesday, October 21, 2009

"The Warning" Before the "Meltdown"

The title of this post refers to a couple of excellent features from PBS regarding America's recent economic situation.

Yesterday I came home from work tired from a frantic day where I was miserable w/ a sore throat & slight fever. All I wanted to do was sleep, but I turned on the TV & ended up getting sucked into a revealing episode of Frontline. It examined the complex world of unregulated "black box" financial markets that have resembled a high-tech underground gambling den.


I've always seen Alan Greenspan as a scoundrel who was the High Prophet of Greed. He conveniently waited until he retired to publicly realize that his entire worldview of unrestrained free-market capitalism was "wrong." By then, his all-powerful deity, The Free Market, had viciously ravaged the economy of not only the entire country, but the whole world.

I also have to wonder if Obama would have surrounded himself with the likes of Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, & Tim Geithner if he had seen an exposé like this... if he didn't know about it all already.

Despite personally having a strong aversion to most things involving numbers & finance, I have occasionally commented on the state of the economy in general terms. Although the system of capitalism is an effective tool of social exchange, unregulated free-market corporatism has been proven it can be a parasitic monster. I think it's pretty obvious to the average person that the American citizens have been robbed repeatedly by financial institutions who are supposed to provide them a 'service'.

There were items in the news today that show the ideological gap between Washington, which ostensibly represents The People, vs. the bankers on Wall Street, which only represents God Money.

On the one hand you have The White House trying to grab the reigns on the ravenous capitalist beast:


On the other hand, you have the Kings of the Marketplace who want to maintain the unbalanced status quo:

"Goldman Sachs Analyst:
Income ‘Inequality’ Will Lead To
‘Prosperity And Opportunity For All’ "


Finally, on the PBS website for "The Warning" I saw a link to a feature called "Meltdown" which is a continuing look at the financial industry.

When I clicked to the page, I was pleasantly surprised to find the most recent item to be about Monkey-nomics:

Economics for Monkeys

I have this great idea for a 'Grooming-based Derivative Market'!

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