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TechnoratiAlan Shrugged: Greenspan, Ayn Rand and Their God That Failed
In a historic moment, former Fed chair Alan Greenspan acknowledged he had been wrong for years to assume that government regulation was bad for markets. Whoops—there goes decades of Ayn Rand down the drain.
In a congressional hearing room on Thursday, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, one of the most influential civil servants of the past century, saw his stock plummet—and his entire career lose its moorings. More important, the ideological battle over economic theory and the role of government in markets—a fight that has played out in the current presidential campaign—took a historic turn.
With members of the House oversight and government reform committee blasting Greenspan for his past decisions that helped pave the way for the current financial crisis, he acknowledged that his libertarian view of markets and the financial world had not worked out so well. "You know," he told the legislators, "that's precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well." While Greenspan did defend his various decisions, he admitted that his faith in the ability of free and loosely-regulated markets to produce the best outcomes had been shaken: "I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms."
In other words, whoops—there goes decades of Ayn Rand down the drain.
Democrats on the committee made Greenspan eat ideological crow. And after the hearing, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California released letters Greenspan had written to legislators in 2002 and 2003 that now cast the former chief banker as out of touch with financial reality.
Back then, Feinstein was pushing for regulating financial instruments known as derivatives—particularly those called swaps. In 2000, Republican Senator Phil Gramm, then the chairman of the Senate banking committee, had used a sly legislative maneuver to pass a bill keeping swaps free from federal regulation. (Lobbyists for financial firms had helped to write the bill.) The swaps market subsequently exploded, as financial firms bought and sold swaps as insurance to cover their trading in subprime securities and other freewheeling financial products. In a nutshell: the rise of unregulated swaps enabled the growth of the shaky subprime securities at the heart of the current financial crisis. Greenspan was an ardent supporter of keeping swaps virtually unregulated.
In 2001, Enron, having gone crazy with energy derivatives, collapsed—after the firm had manipulated the California electricity market, costing residents of Feinstein's states billions of dollars. Following that fiasco, Feinstein decided the derivatives market needed to be reined in. As The Wall Street Journal reported in 2004, "When she telephoned Mr. Greenspan for support, he declined, telling her the proposal threatened the multitrillion dollar derivatives industry, which he considers an important stabilizing force that diffuses financial risk."
In September 2002, Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Harvey Pitt, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman James Newsome wrote a letter to members of Congress to note their opposition to legislation that would regulate derivatives. They wrote:
We believe that the [over-the-counter] derivatives markets in question have been a major contributor to our economy's ability to respond to the stresses and challenges of the last two years. This proposal would limit this contribution, thereby increasing the vulnerability of our economy to potential future stresses....
We do not believe a public policy case exists to justify this governmental intervention. The OTC markets trade a wide variety of instruments. Many of these are idiosyncratic in nature....
While the derivatives markets may seem far removed from the interests and concerns of consumers, the efficiency gains that these markets have fostered are enormously important to consumers and to our economy.
Greenspan and the others urged Congress "to be aware of the potential unintended consequences" of legislation to regulate derivatives.
They got it exactly wrong. Swaps and derivatives ended up undermining, not bolstering, the economy.
Feinstein was not convinced by Greenspan's argument, and she continued to press for legislation to regulate swaps. And Greenspan continued to resist. In a June 11, 2003 letter—also signed by the new Treasury secretary. John Snow, the new SEC chairman, William Donaldson, and CFTC chairman Newsome—Greenspan praised derivatives and called them an essential part of the economy:
Businesss, financial institutions, and investors throughout the economy rely upon derivatives to protect themselves from market volatility triggered by unexpected economic events. This ability to manage risks makes the economy more resilient and its importance cannot be underestimated. In our judgment, the ability of private counterparty surveillance to effectively regulate these markets can be undermined by inappropriate extensions of government regulations.
They were asserting that government regulation undercuts market-driven self-regulation. But as events have demonstrated, unregulated swaps did not protect Big Finance firms; they weakened the entire financial industry in the United States and overseas.
In a November 5, 2003 letter, signed only by Greenspan, the Fed chair again took a shot at Feinstein's proposal to control derivatives. He noted that "enhanced market discipline" would address concerns about the manipulation of markets.
Before the oversight committee, Greenspan said that he had been "partially" wrong to believe that swaps did not need regulation. But he did seek cover by claiming he had not been alone in screwing up: "The Federal Reserve had as good an economic organization as exists. If all those extraordinarily capable people were unable to foresee the development of this critical problem...we have to ask ourselves: Why is that? And the answer is that we're not smart enough as people. We just cannot see events that far in advance."
But not everyone got it wrong. In the late 1990s, regulators at the CFTC wanted to regulate swaps. Gramm, Greenspan and others—including senior members of the Clinton administration—did not. Following the Enron debacle, Feinstein took a run at this. But Greenspan and Bush administration officials said no. And it was not an issue of smarts; it was a matter of ideology.
In fact, it was always a matter of ideology for Greenspan, a libertarian champion. In 1963, writing in Rand's "Objectivist" newsletter, he noted, "It is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for honest dealings and a quality product." Regulation, he maintained, undermines this "superlatively moral system." Self-governance by choice, he said, would be more effective than governance through government. Regulation, Greenspan maintained, was the enemy of freedom: "At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun."
Well, it turns out that at the bottom of the system that Greenspan oversaw for years, there was nothing but a pile of bad paper. And testifying to the House oversight committee, Greenspan, one of the more ideological Washington players of the past few decades, essentially said that Ayn Randism had let him—and the entire world—down. It was truly a God that failed.
David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief.
77 Comments so far
Show AllHi David Corn.
Actually in his book "The Age of Turbulence" Dr. Greenspan comes out for a forced backed economic system with respect to taxation on the basis of the question "What if someone doesn't pay?" The context of why they would be paying or not is not even discussed!
Objectivism is against such force backed taxation. Additionally, for those born here, the income tax system is enforced largely by contract to banks and jurisdiction of administrative courts over the bank's customers under these contracts. Get a bank account, become liable for taxes which are due from the income the bank takes in through your deposits.
The metaphysics of Objectivism is empirical, from sensory data. It's epistemology is rational self interest. It values gold backed currency.Every Fiat currency created in the history of the world has failed. It is against the welfare state which fiat money monopolists have propped up for the expansion of their wiggle room. It is for an aristocracy of competency, not an aristocracy of political pull granted to insiders like Dr. Greenspan.
Alan Greenspan was employed as a Fiat money monopolist and for tax consideration a regulated economist. His economic ideas are based on computer models developed after World War 2. He used these models to determine the Glass Stigel act was hindering financial institutions from a robust state more impervious to economic down turns. He says so in his book The Age of Turbulence.
Ayn Rand never implored the necessity of derivatives, credit swaps and other speculative instruments like ARM backed securities. She never said such instruments should exist or be unregulated. Dr Alan Greenspan went to bat again and again over many years for those very same economy collapsers! It is conceptually careless to conflate such grand lapses in value creation and stewardship on the part of Wall Street and Dr. Alan Greenspan with the VALUE based philosophy of Ayn Rand, and the competent producers of real goods and services as you have done sir.
What a slimeball Alan Greenspan turned out to be! Greenspan took a hard statist turn away from the ideas of Ayn Rand about 40 years ago and now has the unmitigated gall to blame his actions on her! Unbelievable.
For the uninformed, Alan Greenspan has been acting in direct opposition to the ideas of Ayn Rand for about 4 decades. Had he not departed from it, America would not be in this mess.
Oh, and Ayn Rand would have nothing but contempt for someone who will not accept personal accountability for his errors.
So, I was watching the Superbowl. This is just a short game, much less complex and messy than corporate business. Football has a plethora of rules, which are administered exactly, comprehensively, fairly, and on-the-spot - with punishment for infractions being nearly instantaneous. And often having severe consequences. Yet, the same conservative fools who agree that you need referees all over a football field to keep the game sane, think business can run without it.
Wall St. is football without referees ;')
I hate to bother you in your little theory, but I have two important comments that need to be made, in fact two points you could've come across in your I'm sure thorough research and included in your article:
1. Ayn Rand was a philosopher, not an economist. If you want to prove Alan Greenspan (an economist) wrong, that's fine. However, Ayn Rand never advocated for laissez faire capitalism on that basis. What she said is that capitalism was the only moral system, because it doesn't involve the initiation of force, it relies on individuals interacting only through trade. That has nothing to do with what is practical, only with what is right.
2. Laissez-faire capitalism is a system in which the government is completely separate from economics. It's not a system in which some all-knowing egomaniac (like Greenspan) is running things and making small adjustments based on his beliefs. Objectivism (Ayn Rand's philosophy) doesn't advocate for an "Objectivist" running the economy, it advocates for individual freedom and property rights.
Anyone who would accept to become the chairman of the Federal Reserve is, by definition, the opposite of an Objectivist.
So how exactly does Greenspan's screw-up reflect on Ayn Rand's philosophy?
Your error lies in thinking by association, rather than using logic. Your reasoning is: well, they've met before, and I have a problem with Rand, so let me use Greenspan's admission of guilt as an argument against her. Most people don't have a clue what the actual facts are anyway, so this should fly.
What I always wonder about objectivist-libertarians is whether the the ideas they promote the result of extreme naievete, or extreme cynicism. The whole theory seems to completely ignore the whole realm of social behavour of groups of humans. Are there any objectivist sociologists out there?
I can help with part of your premise. There are no Objectivist-Libertarians. Objectivism is a value to life driven philosophy. Libertarianism is a freedom driven philosophy. The idea that one may seek or have freedoms outside the context of values is abhorrent to Objectivism. To the Objectivist Life is a supreme value. To the Libertarian anarchy or a close cousin may constitute value. It is left undefined!
Again, when it comes to sociologists the continuum may be seen as ranging from conservative to libertarian. Values as they relate to ones life being the primary yard stick for judging the efficacy of value are not encompassed in sociology. This concatenation is unique to Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Objectivism is not a behaviorist branch of psychology or it's research. The epistemology of Objectivism is rational self interest. The metaphysics is empirical from sensory data, not whim or religious revelation.
An opinion poll won't help explain it. Objectivism is not board certified by the AMA or the FDA or the American Psychiatric Association. It is a value based philosophy.
If someone's actions destroy the economy, a high value to rational peoples world wide, they can't be seen as cogent, beneficial, rational. Anarchy can't be conflated with production, autonomy, equanimity or rational self interest.
David Corn himself needs some exorcism from Ayn Randite neoliberal economics himself. He was staunch defender of everything Clinton did and regularly slandered any movement that challenged the elite consensus. He was one big reason I cancelled my Nation subscripton back in 2000.
yeah rene that was always a problem (working for the mic)..i worked 1 yr. for aerospace (my first)--it did not feel good..('68)..then i rationalized for the rest of the time..did refuse at one time to work on testing fuses for land mines destined for viet nam..it was always there running around in the back of the mind..even though it was commercial stuff the knowledge given always ended up blowing away women and children..i suppose that is why i gave the proceeds of my love of electronics away..i thought a lot about john galt wiping down locomotives when the u.s. bombed iraq the first time..i went on strike, but was only able to give up the money--not the work..so i worked tax free for a pittance for yrs..it does not change the feeling of contribution to the mic..it's the cross roads thing..soul and all ya know..
ken
Be sure and vote. That will make everything all better. Pretend the system isn't irreparably broken. Pretend that all of a sudden the 99% ignorant will awaken. Be sure and vote. Be sure and write and call your representatives and senators. They'll listen, just like they did when you told them to vote "NO" on the "bailout package" theft of $700 billion dollars. Get out the vote. All will be well.
-- EKATON --
Some of the above comments are quite profound.
Feinstein is a fraud as said above, but Maiden also should expect little if any help from Sen. Chris Dodd, who got a sweetheart deal from Countrywide, one of the culprits in this national and global RAPE.
I have heard or read two references today to the fact that the Senate passed UNANIMOUSLY in 2000 the anti-regulation act that Senator Feinstein supposedly opposed. She is, like many others, an effective grandstander.
A point of note: David Corn used to work in D.C. for The Nation, but now he is in California writing for The Rolling Stone. He ought to leave the Greenspan issue to others better educated in economics and "Libertarian" lit (Chris Buckley comes to mind...!) and cover the politics of the Sheehan/Pelosi race, or is that now invisible given the risible rise of Sarah Palin on the feminist front?
We had the dot-com bubble and the Enron scandal, and nobody learned from that? What they learned was how to bankrupt the world economy while "earning" millions and billions trading on illusion and delusion. Does anybody seriously believe that now that they have corrupted everything they intend to "spread the wealth"?
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
-30-
When he dies I will piss on his fucking grave!
Coffeelover,,,,,
gees logos have i been deluded all these yrs..i took away from reading rand the idea that it was quite ok to be good at what i did and it was quite ok to give the proceeds away..i did not read all her stuff, but most..i read her for the first time when i was 24 and only started to see what she was saying when i read her at 48..i took away the idea that greed is not good, that selfishness is ok when it involves ones time and desire, but that the idea of money was a waste..the idea of being the best is what counts not the idea of rewards..
maybe at 64 it is time to read her again--just to see if i can see where i have been..
ken
I briefly got to know and sometimes socialized (oops.. wrong word!) with Ayn Rand and her circle of friends while I was in college in NY/NJ in the '70's, studying political theory and music. It surprised me that, in addition to Rachmaninnov's concertos, she also loved ragtime piano-- both of which I could play pretty well, back then. So we hit it off for that reason, I suppose; and because politically, for a while, I was also a "libertarian." Or at least I thought I was.
Especially for hyper-striving, life-inexperienced, crypto-insecure youngsters - like I was --Rand's ideas, much more than those of Marx or Engles, can seem to brilliantly resolve the muddles of human nature and societies' imperfect systems. But in the end, of course they don't
As somebody noted in a good post above, many if not most of Rand's ideas are easily outgrown--that is, if you don't develop an authoritarian personality structure in the meantime, and providing you come to reckon, in your own life, that worshipping the individual human ego (your own or anyone elses) as some kind of Supreme Absolute doesn't make sense: doesn't allow for personal growth thru doubt: and is, in fact, a kind of deep personal hysteria, probably borne out of trauma and unconscious fears about the inherent uncertainties of existence.
What finally convinced me that Rand and her system of Objectivism was unbalanced (and, increasingly, crazy) was her furious/endless denunciation of the Environmental Movement, which she saw as nothing but "...a bunch of spoiled, irrational, life hating failures and socialists trying to steal what they could never create, themselves."
In the '70's, Rand frequently did guest editorials on NBC-TV, maintaining again and again, in all seriouness that, "...if people were rational, they would be down on their knees, worshipping industrial smokestacks [as the symbols of human genius]...instead of trying to regulate them."
Her hyper rigid thinking (I personally believe she was badly psycho-traumatized by her experience of the Russian Revolution and suffered from a kind of lifelong PTSD) could not allow honest/rational interface with an 'imprecise' system like the earth's natural ecosystem. The ecosystem clearly wasn't something that could be privately owned or controlled by single, 'rationally self-interested' persons, and therefore, according to her, the Environmental Movement was the problem --not the smoke stacks and not the pollution, and certainly not her "everything-MUST-be-privatized" 'philosophy.'
To me, Rand came to embody a rigidly absolutist outlook that was in the end hardly distinguishable from a Cotton Mather-type religious psychosis, or from the Office of the Inquisiton of the medieval Catholic Church.
She seemed to me a decent enough person to know on a social basis. She was obviously talented and brilliant in several areas, and more than a few of her ideas have honor... but those cognitive areas and those ideas were not, I think, ever emotionally or even intellectually integrated below the surface of her being.
The fact that her (now provably irrational) Objectivist economic ideas came to almost totally-dominate the New Right's think tanks' theories and pronunciamentos, and later, the neocon's national GOP legislative agenda, is a frightening testament to how vulnerable we humans still are to collective hypnois and actionated maddness, whenever it's passionatley packaged as Truth.
Unlike Neitzche, whom she 'admired' only with 'qualifications,' Rand had no ego room for honest self-examination, nor the underlying ego strength to grow positively thru reasonable self-doubt. She was in frightened-love with Her Truth, but never with the process of truth.
It pains me to denounce her so, but I believe her ideas, in particular, have 'legitimated' and left for all-too-many, a hedious, anti-human legacy -- the fuller, disastrous effects of which [on our politics and economics] we are just beginning to comprehend.
Nor would this be overestimating the trickled-down 'influence' of her ideas and passions on the believers in 'trickle-down' economic theories --i.e., on the fools who've run and battered our county since, at minimum, the bogus Reagan Ephipany.
Thanks for these personal recollections and reflections.
Please stop propagating the idea the Alan Greenspan was a "civil servant". The Federal Reserve is no more "Federal" than Federal Express! The Fed is privately owned by the moguls of the big banks. It uses the good faith and credit of the people to lend us money, that they create out of thin air, upon which we have to pay interest as well as principal that then becomes "real money", based on the value of our work products, which they then get to keep. We are all serfs - slaves to the Fed.
The current crisis was deliberate and their way of gobbling up the major brokerage houses and smaller banks, while feasting on short selling and the bargains at the bottom. When banks lent money to buy homes, they used the down payment to print the money on their 16:1 assets to loans (read money creation) ratio. When they foreclose, whatever they can get, so long as it's more than the down payment, is profit that they take now and they are able to write off the balance as a "loss".
It's 1929 all over again, only significantly more sophisticated.
They allowed and encouraged Credit Default Swaps without the regulation or reserves required of insurance companies, then they bought the Mortgage backed securities knowing full well that they could use them to call the Credit Default Swap guarantees and gobble up AIG, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns and smaller banks in one fell swoop. The Fed took over 150 billion out of the available cash pool for banks on purpose to exacerbate the problem.
The Fed needs to be nationalized and the Fed bankers charged and tried for treason.
If the Fed were a real central bank, the interest on loans outstanding would literally pay for the entire cost of government - we wouldn't need taxes!
Anyone who believes that the Fed is a federal government institution need only look at how the Fed is able to act without the Treasury Department or Congress to lend money to AIG for example and take control of it. No bailout legislation required. We the taxpayers are not the beneficiaries of any profits downstream, the Fed and it's corrupt masters are - they just use our credit to do it.
In justifying selfishness Ayn Rand fell into a commonplace fallacy: that what one sees in a given society is somehow exhaustive of the full range of human nature. In capitalism, selfishness is normative (but always ambiguously so, because human beings are, after all, moral creatures and selfishness is universally regarded in all the great moral systems as a social sin). Rand's project, as a social commentator, was to remove the ambiguity and to show that selfishness was really the highest of all the virtues. Obviously, this "philosophy" ends up glorifying the most selfish as the most virtuous.
Greenspan and Friedman and other "libertarians" accept this preposterous equation: that the most selfish (the most anti social) are also the most public-minded. The "self-regulating" market is nothing but the mythology that the selfish must be left to their own devices (that is, they must be wholly free to pursue their own interests, which is somehow OUR interest as well!).
Imagine if you asked a clan-based communalist society what is the basic motivation of the individual person. They would probably say "social solidarity" rather than "selfishness." Indeed, it might strike them as peculiar to say that human beings are fundamentally motivated by their own interests.
Ayn Rand was wrong to assume that capitalist society sums up what it is to be human.
Sioux Rose
Interesting thread. ARDEE (10:19) Real wisdom! Good points: WJM, TOQUEVILLE, NANOO, & JRP.
People see what they wish to see, particularly when it confirms their self-selected position. Greenspan is one of the elites so he was predisposed to seek a philosophy that would lend (in this case false) legitimacy to his wish to keep the markets "free" from regulation.
If a thief is caught with the booty, he's expected to give it back. I would love to see some effort on the part of those who made out like bandits to return at least a portion (preferably more) of what they absconded with.
I knew someone in school who read everything she wrote and all the philosophy pamphlets, and I was forced to listen to his preaching. There is such a thing as secular fundamentalism.
But despite the hokey beliefs that included rants on what is humor(laughing at a rich woman slipping on a banana peel is funny, but laughing at yourself never is).
They believe if two people apply for the same job, no matter how mundane, the better person will get it if no government interferes. Their naive belief in human nature is incredible.
Some pamphlet titles were named The Virtue of Selfishness. My favorite was "animal lovers, the new man haters."
She argued the best way to fight racism was to highlight the difference between humans and "lesser beings." And that environmentalism was as great a threat as communism.
But thanks to her philosophy, i was able to dissect human supremacy beliefs and this disciple of hers was my first victim.
Because they believe their views are absolute objective truth, you can really see how secular humanism and theistic humanism share the same structure and idiocy. They believe they are better than others simply because they say they are better, just as racists do, not because of any sort of objective truth.
This student friend really went over the deep end when i explained the flaws in his thinking. Of course he called me immoral. a common expression they use, as well as sophist.
BTW
the heir to Rand's philosophical foundation, Leonard Peikoff(sic?) ended up charged with embezzlement I believe.
the virtues of selfishness.
Wow, I was enjoying your post until you sailed off into la-la land with your comment about Secular Humanism. You'd better read up on the beliefs behind it. You're 180 degrees off base on that one.
I too was really into Ayn Rand in my younger days. The thing that struck me was how the folks at the discussion groups I attended were so good about repeating the talking points of Objectivism. When I had the nerve to ask "but why do you think that, you yourself?" I would get blank stares.
Almost all of us read Ayn Rand as college sophomores. With unsophisticated minds, her stories seemed believable, and her philosophy was very attractive. Ignore the rules, do what you want, and serve the greater good. With more education, more knowledge, and some adult judgement, most of us reached the conclusion that this was a way over-simplified view of the financial universe that would fail badly in the real world. Unfortunately, some of the more gullible (read here Alan Greenspan) never got over their wonder at Rand's ideas. A generation of presidents (Reagan, two Bushes, and Clinton) were willing to trust the country's future to the Greenspan philosophy that no regulation is good regulation, and that the "Masters of the Universe" could be trusted to do what is right for all of us. This severe lapse in judgement has probably cost the economy and the taxpayers a few trillion dollars, with no end in sight.
The only good news is that we are on the verge of re-structuring the financial system, and if Obama and the new Dem majority can deliver, we may see a renaissance similar to the New Deal of the 30s and 40s, where old, failed policies were abandoned wholesale, and new ideas and projects ruled the day. The Reagan neo-con revolution based on deregulation, empire-building, and war against the working class is being thrown on the scrap-heap of history, making room at last for progressive government, and not a moment too soon.
A German writer once famously remarked that the ruling ideas of any age are those of its ruling class. When Kings and feudal lords ruled the roost, countless writers testified to the "divinity" of the monarch and the Great Chain of Being, wherein social hierarchy is justified. When slaveholders made their case, philosophers came forward to convince the credulous that slaveholding is really "paternalism" by another name. From Aristotle to Hobbes to Burke to Carlyle to John Calhoun, "conservative" thinkers have always found a way to legitimate a prevailing power system as the ONLY GOOD MODEL OF HUMAN GOVERNANCE ("There is no alternative!).
Now come Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand, at this late stage in the game, to justify the rule of the capitalists. Rand has been misunderstood as a psychologist; she is really a shaman. She somehow finds benificence in selfishness, a magic trick that astounds ordinary people, who have been taught that selfishness is just what it means--care of myself to the detriment of others. Capitalism is a system that sustains and encourages selfishness, and no twist of the "invisible hand" can change that fact.
Friedman and Greenspan were never "thinkers" in the true sense of that word. They were dogmatists, fanatically committed to the market, wholly lacking in elementary moral sense. In the "real economy," in the real world, things have been bad for quite some (job losses, wage stagnation, etc, etc). But it's only now--now that the capitalists have endured some major setbakcs--that Greenspan's eyes have been opened to the "failings of the system."
This man is no genius; he is wholly blind to human realities...
skidog
Talk about a GOD that failed,Kevin Pelips(?)did speak of in the remarkably preseient BAD MONEY,observing that the FINACIAL SERVICES sector has grown at the cost of manufacturing,etc.
But,not to worry the MARVERICK,McSame,will make things better.Yeah right.
The basic assumption of the "self-regulating market" ideology is, that "bad products will be driven out" because
"It is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for honest dealings and a quality product."
But this is only valid, if the buyer (all market participants) has ACCURATE INFORMATION about the quality, (long term) consequences of use of the products and the real intentions of the seller. Only if they have access to the same information, will there be any chance of an informed judgement by the "market".
In this context, the astronomical rise of the PR-industry is no accident... their job is to mislead us about the real effects of unbridled consumerism and in many cases keep us ignorant about the environmental and social cost of myriad consumer and industrial products...(remember asbestos? DDT? (won the Nobel Prize for medicine!)thousands of cancer inducing chemicals, etc.)
Weakening consumer protection in the name of "free markets" is regarded as "regulatory relief"... (read: keep the public ignorant about negative consequences)
In the case of Wall Street this assumption is absolutely laughable: hedge funds and other derivative and commodity traders are gambling with the livelihoods of other people: whether they bet on the prices of food, energy or the risk of default, the very essence of the game is to deceive and to manipulate, to drive prices down or up, whatever is profitable for the moment. The long term consequences for farmers, consumers and society as a whole did not bother them. They played a combination of poker, charade and a pyramid scheme.. always trying to find a new sucker they could cheat on... pity, that in the end, they screwed each other...
So it is hilarious to hear politicians lament "the loss of confidence" in the banking industry... which they seek to restore by handing out trillions to professional con-men.....
Let´s rescue the swindlers because they are "too big too fail" - and create even bigger financial conglomerates in the process! How stupid can you get?! (We need to break up the financial supermarkets and separate commercial from investment banking and insurance companies.)
If a trader can make millions in a few hours or days -why should he care about his "reputation"? (an important factor for moral behaviour is the acceptance and respect of our fellow citizens)The more opaque and less accountable a business becomes, with the ability to reap enormous short term profits, the smaller is the incentive for the players to behave "morally". In the end "making money" (with no real productive value behind it and no concern for the consequences to the real economy) becomes an obsession and every new record profit is an incentive to strive for more....
E. F. Schumacher wrote in his classic "Small is Beautiful" that capitalism is doomed to fail because it contains no limiting principle.....The "growth" and profits are never enough... so people and the environment have to be exploited more and more .. until the system destroys itself
QUOTE: "Greenspan is an idiot. Anyone who refuses to admit that people are greedy, selfish fools that will kill off the whole planet for their own pocketbooks is a dangerous idiot who should NEVER be put in charge of anything."
Greenspan is an idiot in the sense that all classic economists are idiots because their ignore environmental imperatives and promote an economic system that is incompatible with nature´s laws. (a system that has to grow incessantly in order to function is self-destructive (like a cancer grows until it kills the host organism).
He pumped all that cheap money into the derivatives system because otherwise the ongoing decline (depression?) of the US economy would have been obvious years ago, so creating speculative bubbles was all that was left to boost "growth" rates and maintain the illusion that the US is still the "engine" of the global economy (only with Wall Street betting and military expenditure). From his (and his cronies) point of view they did the right thing because the top 1% of Americans did extremely well and the top 20% now own 85% of the national wealth.... Perhaps some of them have lost a couple of zillions lately, so what? Paulsen´s rescue money may find its way to their pockets.
The ugly truth is exposed here: http://www.chrismartenson.com/crash-course
Final words must go to MILTON FRIEDMAN - the god-father of free markets:
If I’m going to do good with other peoples’ money, I first have to take it away from them. That means, that the welfare state philosophy of doing good with other peoples’ money (…) is a philosophy of violence and corrosion. It’s against freedom, because I have to use force to get the money. In the second place, very few people spend other peoples’ money as carefully as they spend their own.”
(He meant social welfare of course, corporate and banking welfare is of course OK....)
I been Ayn Randed, nearly branded
Communist, 'cause I'm left-handed.
That's the hand I use, well, never mind!
-Simon and Garfunkle
Nanoo
A repub. friend of mine several years ago gave me the book Atlas Shrugged. His idea was to show that self interest, even greed was acceptable to further human progress and invention, other wise he maintained why would anyone do anything. I offered my copy of "A Short History of Nearly Everything", by Bill Bryson for him to read but he declined. The reason I offered him this book was to show throughout history the many examples of people who without great means and great personal sacrifice devoted their life to invention, discovery and the arts. They loved their work more than making money and a comfortable life.
This is nonsense. Greenspan gave up on Objectivism decades ago. He is another establishment central planner scapegoating what free market elements are left in an instance of 'CYA.' It's obviously working smashingly!
Hey Saint Just, there was no "dim protaginist" in "Anthem" who made a dollar sign in the air. I guess you're following Whitacker Chambers technique of critiquing books you haven't read...
I can't take more of this - reading progressives on Objectivism is like reading Christians on evolution...
I read "Anthem" thirty years ago. Looking at the text online & wading through the incredibly turgid purple prose, I find I conflated the end of "Anthem", with the dim protagonist carving the "sacred word" Ego in stone with the dimwitted protagonist of Atlas Shrugged, who traces the sign of the dollar over the desolate earth.
As the conclusion to "Anthem" indicates, Objectivists are only Stirnerites, and come close to being solipsists, which is why Greenspan and all the dollar/ego enthusiasts with ihm could be "shocked and surprised" by the real factual collapse of a world economy.
I am a bit to old to have been into this Ayn Rand (how is it pronounced?) young-libertarian nonsense. I just remember how this "philosophy" seemed to explode on the scene upon the election of Reagan.
I reached it's extreme once when a guy was talking about how self-gratification and greed was the fundamental root - the grand unifying root to understanding every single thing any human does - down to every eye blink and muscle-twitch! It was a peculiar sophomoric, tuatological sort of argument. Becaue when you would ask why altruistic people like Gandhi or such existed, their answer would simply be "they have a mental condition that causes them to be gratified by sacrificing for others."
I even remember one of the pamphlets that explained how "the only true altruist is a doormat".
.Pronounced 'EIN', means selfish and greedy
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
I for one am relieved to see there was something else besides homeowners that caused this to happen. What I've been hearing up to now, even from the Chamber of Commerce's president, that a bunch of low - life homeowners caused this. As if we all woke up one day and decided - coast to coast- that we should just go out there and screw the banks on home loans!
Yes, I'm one of them! My husband and I are raising 4 very young grandchildren and have 'bad' or no credit after trying to save a child from drugs. We struggle and scrap to get by with all our savings gone trying to 'do the right thing for family'. But let me tell you, we leased a house and immediately, the mortgage company began hounding us to buy. Calling me at work, stopping by the house and calling at home. He'd use the children as reason we should chance it and after a couple of months, I trusted him. From that day forward, we've been in a free fall because of his lies and the faulty loan product. Starting with a bait and switch of people all the way through signing, our payments were almost double what he'd said they'd be, no two years of taxes and insurance in escrow, etc. Yes, we should have been more diligent than trusting but where were our officials warning people of the fine print that would destroy us? Now here we sit in a single wide mobile home hoping to avoid any overdraft fees week after week and realize the banks are as much a racket as the home markets. The banks will 'authorize' a purchase then charge a $35.00 fee because we're $1.00 over our balance! They'll argue that even with online data, phone data and electronic everything, they can not and are not required to give us a good balance upon inquiry of our account, we have to keep a paper record -- their information does not need to be accurate. Add to that they will extract from your account in real time but if we deposit a check into our account, we have to wait 5-7 days to get the funds! Even with all that easy revenue, they still fail and we have save them??????
Thank you Senator Dodd (I'm still waiting for your return call about that) and God help us all. Sign me unemployed in Michigan.
I for one am relieved to see there was something else besides homeowners that caused this to happen. What I've been hearing up to now, even from the Chamber of Commerce's president, that a bunch of low - life homeowners caused this. As if we all woke up one day and decided - coast to coast- that we should just go out there and screw the banks on home loans!
Yes, I'm one of them! My husband and I are raising 4 very young grandchildren and have 'bad' or no credit after trying to save a child from drugs. We struggle and scrap to get by with all our savings gone trying to 'do the right thing for family'. But let me tell you, we leased a house and immediately, the mortgage company began hounding us to buy. Calling me at work, stopping by the house and calling at home. He'd use the children as reason we should chance it and after a couple of months, I trusted him. From that day forward, we've been in a free fall because of his lies and the faulty loan product. Starting with a bait and switch of people all the way through signing, our payments were almost double what he'd said they'd be, no two years of taxes and insurance in escrow, etc. Yes, we should have been more diligent than trusting but where were our officials warning people of the fine print that would destroy us? Now here we sit in a single wide mobile home hoping to avoid any overdraft fees week after week and realize the banks are as much a racket as the home markets. The banks will 'authorize' a purchase then charge a $35.00 fee because we're $1.00 over our balance! They'll argue that even with online data, phone data and electronic everything, they can not and are not required to give us a good balance upon inquiry of our account, we have to keep a paper record -- their information does not need to be accurate. Add to that they will extract from your account in real time but if we deposit a check into our account, we have to wait 5-7 days to get the funds! Even with all that easy revenue, they still fail and we have save them??????
Thank you Senator Dodd (I'm still waiting for your return call about that) and God help us all. Sign me unemployed in Michigan.
"I for one am relieved to see there was something else besides homeowners that caused this to happen. What I've been hearing up to now, even from the Chamber of Commerce's president, that a bunch of low - life homeowners caused this. As if we all woke up one day and decided - coast to coast- that we should just go out there and screw the banks on home loans!"
Not one to negate individual responsibility, I also recognize institutional fraud when I see it. There is a reason there are laws against baiting. What was done was wholesale bait-and-switch - which is fraud! The problem is, we now have the cops in cahoots with the robbers.
This is another example of the class warfare that has gone on since...well, since the beginning, I think. The elite will always crap on the rest of us until we mobilize again. Some of us can't, and I hope that someone like Dodd can help. The rest of us need to be activating and organizing and voting and screaming bloody murder, and we need to do it every chance we can! The few good cops out there can only do so much - we must do the rest.
"It is not true that it's one damn thing after another - it's one damn thing over and over." Edna St. Vincent Millay
"Feinstein was not convinced by Greenspan's argument, and she continued to press for legislation to regulate swaps."
It should be mentioned that the 262-page Phil Gramm amendment (to prevent regulation of credit default swaps) of the "Commodities Future Modernization Act of 2000" passed 95-0 in the Senate.
The business self-regulation that Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand believe in happens under certain conditions: Some business people self-regulate recognizing an overlap between public/private interests. Some are motivated by religious and social pressures. And still more self-regulate for survival in smaller, relatively isolated economies. But self-regulation is easily over-ridden by greed/corruption, which prevails when power is concentrated. Rand, Strauss, Friedman, Greenspan, et al, conveniently (deliberately?) forgot to mention this. Localism is an environment that promotes self-regulation by limiting power concentration.
If a part of the collateral damage of this financial fiasco is to bring about the way overdue tarnishing of the legacy of Ayn Rand, then some good has come out this mass of greed and hubris on the part of the corporate oligarchy.
Sure, Ayn Rand "libertarianism" is just unconstrained capitalism. And we know that capitalism, left to its own devices, feeds off complexity, bubbles, exploitation and theft.
So, there's no new story here. Capitalism requires true believers. It's also not news that these bubble cycles happen as a regular part of the capitalist system. Each time the bubble pops we get, "Oops, I did it again," but no one seems the wiser for it.
Regulation is just a bandaid after the damage has been done, but whenever it's totally removed, expect massive theft.
It's nice to hear that Senator Diane Feinstein, on the QT, battled derivatives. Meanwhile, she and her investor husband have made millions investing in defense stocks. And it's all legal profit, despite the apparent conflict of interest.
Feinstein is a big war supporter who claims she was duped by Bush into giving him authority to attack Iraq after the Bushies showed her "secret" info about Sadam Hussein's WMD plans. She supposedly knows better now, but she has never opposed the continued war funding.
Of course, Feinstein also supported the credit card industry's bill that makes it harder for people with credit card debts to restructure under the bankruptcy laws. Interesting twist there on standing up for the little guy.
I think author David Corn was just fed one of those Feinstein cover stories, making it seem as if she isn't the plutocratic monster she really is. Will Feinstein and hubby donate their war stock profits to families in Iraq that have lost their loved ones? If the Feinsteins want a little karma on their side, they've got to do more than place "hero" stories with David Corn.
-TIA
Dianna Feinstein is the Vegas slot machine that occasionally dispenses coins but over the long haul she wins.
thanks rene--tis exactly how i feel but cannot say, except i never gave up..john galt is my hero along with bob widlar the founder of silicon linear circuits..realizing that rand came from russia and viewing the corruptness of james taggart and friends i have always believed rand was a true communist, as i hope i am..give the best you have--accept what you need...i ran several electronic companies-attempting to create a true 20th century motor co..failed..am too old now, but had age not caught up with me i would try again cause i believe the idea of "best for need" is how this gig should work..small story..i bought a copy of Atlas Shrugged for the each of the management of one of the companies i ran..read one of the copies ( many times i have read this book)..the print job was terrible..it came from random house, and when i wrote to them and said how is it possible you could do this to a book about perfection, they said "we agree" and refunded the bread..
i do not believe one can connect greed to the 3 main characters in Atlas Shrugged..
who is john galt?
ken
Ken,
Well, thank you for saying that. Funny, I too started in electronics, but I couldn't stomach making weapons systems, which is all the electronics this country makes anymore. If you every try again, let me know!
I read the short screed "Anthem", with its dim protagonist making the sign of the dollar in the air at the end, and that was all anyone ever needed to know of Ayn Rand and her demented cult of adoration of ego & money.
Whittaker Chambers had it right when he wrote that a voice echoed in her books, "To a gas chamber, go!"
WJM, just finished reading your rant, couldn’t agree more; an excellent analysis of the symptom’s creator and justified beginning with Regan. I too would put our slide into insolvency’s origin at post 1981, and fast forward to include your “height of self delusion” as a precursor to national bankruptcy under Bernanke; let them now enforce his “beatnik trying to make it rich” brand of central bank screw-ups. When this sucker does go down it will fall even harder once realizing government intervention was the very thing that prolonged the last depression.
Funny how a selfish fool will vote for the “party of tax cuts” that hocks their own children’s future with the very backdoor deficits this lack of revenue creates.
At risk of appearing the typical short and cute blog response, insofar as “economists have [an easier underlying psychological foundation]—self-interest. People do what they do because it’s in their self-interest,” [David Colander, Microeconomics, sixth edition (Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2006) 188.] LOGICALLY the result is “the condition which is called war . . . . and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” [Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, edited by John Plamenatz (Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1969) 143.] Assuming self-interest and , “human wants for goods and services are incapable of being completely satisfied,” [Campbell R. McConnell, Elementary Economics: Principles, Problems, and Policies (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1960) 21.] there is literally no logical basis whereby, "It is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for honest dealings and a quality product." Rather obviously, ALL economics majors should be required to take a class in logic.
Greenspan, Ayn Rand and Their Game Winning Plunder of the World's Treasury.
Now that the Neo-Cons have everybody's money can we declare them the 'victor' and
give them the same reward the Mayan ballplayers always gave to the winning team?
"Democrats on the committee made Greenspan eat ideological crow."
And then gave him a trillion bucks in case they might have hurt his feelings.
So Greenspan is saying he never heard of greed and stupidity.
David,
I understand what your are saying and agree that Greenspan's personal philosophy is bankrupt. Furthermore, Rand did rarely discuss the costs to society of production. However, she had always rejected Greenspan, believing him to be fraud and a faker, more akin to antagonist characters in her books. On that issue she was completely correct. Greenspan would have made a perfect James Taggart or Ellsworth Toohey.
As I understand it, her ideal was honest open people doing real work, trading their best effort with the best effort of others. In her own way, she was an idealist, and if you could wave a magic wand and make everybody like her protagonists; smart enough to see all the effects of their actions, open and honest enough to pay all the costs of their production, then we might live in a Utopian society. The philosophy of Christ is similar, in that if you could wave a magic wand and make everybody live as Christ did, we'd live in a Utopian society. Two very different solutions to the problem of the human condition, both very rarely practiced, both most often miscommunicated, and misunderstood. And both very often used by the craven and corrupt in attempts to misdirect, control, and steal from people.
Today the only public figure I know about that, in some ways, represent Rand's Libertarian philosophy is Ron Paul. And he differs greatly with Greenspan and both political parties.
Full disclosure; as a child I was educated in Catholic schools and was naive enough to believe society would match the Christian ideal. Later in my late teens, I came to realize that my world view was inconsistent with the society I lived in. I came across Rands' books and admit that, as a youth, and young adult, I liked those books. I was once a card carrying Libertarian who voted for Ron Paul in '88. With age and experience I came to realize that her philosophy was inconsistent with reality because society was not open and honest, but instead, was a rigged game most often in the control of people resembling both the Bible's and Rand's antagonists.
I'm with you, I have long been a fan of your writing, and your magazine. Both reflect the best of the two philosophies under discussion. I'm a Systems Engineer and we have our idealized models and then we have what it takes to get a working, robust system. Granted, my problems/systems are simple when compared to society and the human condition. But in my field we too have those that are ignorant, craven, lazy or incompetent, and they very often seek refuge behind system philosophies they don't understand, and/or don't practice. But lets not shoot the idealists, they seek the best of what we could be. And yes, we need to watch like hawks, do the work, and optimize the system. Thats were you have contributed so well for so long.
Best Regards
Greenspan reminded me of some of the defendants @ Nuremberg. His God had failed as did their's but you could still see that they and he had no remorse or real sense of guilt for their disastrous decisions. He's living nicely and I'm sure he won't lose any sleep over all of this. The suffering that his bad calls will now cause are a distant thing to him just as the suffering of the millions they tortured and killed didn't really phase most of the Nazis on trial back then. Some might say this is an unfair comparison but I don't think so. The phrase that comes to mind to describe Greenspan and others like him is "The banality of evil." May he rot in hell for his stupidity and his arrogance. In the mean time he'll just molder in some right wing think tank like AEI or Cato and make a big fat paycheck while doing it. Or better yet he'll write his memoirs in which u can bet he'll blame everyone and anybody but himself for the mess he left behind.
Actually in his book "The Age of Turbulence" Dr. Greenspan comes out for a forced backed economic system with respect to taxation on the basis of the question "What if someone doesn't pay?"
The metaphysics of Objectivism is empirical, from sensory data. It's epistemology is rational self interest.
Ayn Rand never tauted the necessity of derivatives, credit swaps and other speculative instruments like ARM backed securities. Dr Alan Greenspan went to bat again and again over many years for those economy collapsers! It is conceptually careless to conflate such lapses in value creation with the VALUE based philosophy of Ayn Rand, as you have done.
Well your on the right track, you know him. He did write his memoirs and in them he did blamed everybody else. Very un-Randian :-)
I read Ayn Rand when I was about 18 at the urging of a friend. It all sounded so, right.
Then I grew up. It was stuff and nonsense. Why is it that Alan Greenspan never grew up?
pk
"Why is it that Alan Greenspan never grew up?"
That's a very good question. I think we can see this everywhere. There is a kind of arrested development within our culture - a refusal to grow and mature beyond a very limited base.
We are now bumping up against the limits of that immature world view. Hang on to your hats for some punctuated equilibrium.
I read Rand's books when I was in my thirties, and for a long time, Atlas Shrugged was my top favorite book. I recently found a copy so I could re-read it, after learning it was the conservatives Bible. Even with the second reading, I failed to get her message. Then again, I was also never able to see the symbolism that was supposed to be in the literature of my college lit class.
I never read Rand books, but have read excerpts. I did so after reading Daniel Quinn's book, Ishmael. Talk about culture shock! Rand was the ultimate Taker.
I had more than a small giggle watching the markets right after Greenspan admitted he knew there was going be a collapse of the markets that followed his advice.
Right after he admitted that he knew the recent events WOULD happen as early as 2006, the Asian and European markets tanked. When the Dow open on Friday morning, it dropped 500 points in 5 minutes.
Some 'invisible hand'.
Ayn Rand was NO God. This was a fundamentally flawed human being, with a twisted sense of reality. And those who followed the drivel she wrote are just as flawed as she was. They want to believe in "goodness" in people while at the same time they go around doing the most vile things in the name of MONEY.
To believe that the rich deserve to be richer because they were born wealthy is foolish. It also ignores the history of mankind throughout it's history. Greed begets greed. A lack of rules allows and in fact, encourages greed. And greed will ultimately bring about the destruction of everyone who believes in it being an appropriate use of their "talents".
For these people to have thought that this was "working" is just plain foolishness. They refused to listen to those that they were destroying in the process of making themselves inordinately wealthy, and they thought that everything was just great. The height of self delusion. They blinded themselves to reality, and then they called US whiners. I hope that Phil Gramm loses the VAST majority of everything he owns, and damn soon. It's time that he paid for the damage he has done to this coutnry. And the rest of these damned trickle downers, too.
The thing about this that kills me is that I saw this coming 28 years ago when Reagan started giving everything to the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. I have been saying it for the entire time since then, and I have taken abuse apon abuse for it. I have been called all sorts of names, told that I was out of my mind, and now look where we are. Now that it's clear that the whole Reagan debacle has cost us $11 TRILLION and our homes, jobs and children's futures, NOT ONE of those people remembers that they called me these things. But I will never forget it.
Greenspan is an idiot. Anyone who refuses to admit that people are greedy, selfish fools that will kill off the whole planet for their own pocketbooks is a dangerous idiot who should NEVER be put in charge of anything. History is full of examples of this, and you are an idiot if you refuse to admit that. And Greenspan has proven that he is just that.
"But I will never forget it."
Yes... and I will not succumb to the "five minute attention span" that Obama and his mouthpieces want me to adopt as SOP.
I will remember that it was the Democrats who exacted the coup de grâce... and that Obama was the most decisive proponent of the act. The "dividend payout" insured this disaster.
"Ayn Rand was NO God. This was a fundamentally flawed human being, with a twisted sense of reality."
While true, it's important to note that followers treated Rand as if she were a god - Mammon redux. People will always follow someone they believe will deliver them to somewhere from something, be they Ayn Rand or Barack Obama or Ralph Nader.
This is why I keep exhorting people not to pin too much hope on ANY candidate for ANY office ANYwhere. They are flawed vessels, just like us, and are subject to the same temptations and errors. If we are to maintain any semblance of balance, we MUST be active in the whole process. Passivism leads to enslavement.
"It is not true that it's one damn thing after another - it's one damn thing over and over." Edna St. Vincent Millay
.The following is NOT an insult, Ted. Just want to make that clear as we've had misunderstandings in the past.
I find your theories that politics resolves nothing, that all progress depends upon individual growth, a spiritual approach to governance to be sure, a bit awkward for me to get my mind around to say the least..I certainly agree that we the people have a tendency to see our leaders as heroes, almost beyond mortal perhaps, and this is a symptom of laziness and a desire to have a parent rather than a leader.
I think it a matter of belief in a system rather than in a person that is required here. "When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority is wrong". Eugene Debs
When our politicians, only human to be sure, are exposed to a system that pampers, caters to their every hedonistic desire, exposes them to great wealth and great temptation from those who desire things from them, do we say the flaws in our governance lie in the weakness of the electorate or the weakness in our elected? I say that removing the temptation altogether makes the most sense..
"The death of our democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush.It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference and undernourishment." Robert Maynard Hutchins
If we seek an evolutionary change in ourselves before we move to make our politics better we will never move at all. I would love to see your wishes for a great involvement by all come to fruition but I wont wait for it. I believe that many will always be apathetic and , once having voted, will return to their daily routine trusting that elected official to do her job for them. Thus I believe that we must create a system which enables that politician to do her job free of the temptations that now await her. Trusting one to do her job is not a great flaw.
It may be a good thing to remain sceptical, especially if we know for certain just where to train that scepticism. From the harsh dialogues here between those who support the status quo as represented by two party politics and those who seek to add third party influence to a system I see as sick and in dire need of that transfusion I see a scatter gun scepticism at best.
"Mere unorthodoxy or dissent from the prevailing mores is not to be condemned. The absence of such voices would be a symptom of grave illness in our society." Earl Warren
I applaud your call for engagement and scepticism, Mr. Markow, I only seek here to widen the definition of that engagement..
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
I don't consider it to be an insult, ardee...and thanks for the response.
It is a case of the cart and the horse, isn't it? Or...is it? Can we wait for others when we, ourselves, haven't changed? Should we wait for everyone to change at once before we expect any change at all?
These are rhetorical questions, of course. Change happens. For whatever reason, it happens...sometimes very gradually, other times, almost instantaneously.
My point is that as a society, we put far too much emphasis on "them" and not nearly enough on "us", or even "I". I am not calling for an "evolutionary" change, unless that means a change in ourselves to open up to civic engagement. Nothing more than what Ralph Nader has been calling us to do for many years. I have heard him speak several times, and met him once. He has always said that it is up to us, not him, to make things happen. Wise man.
I believe that we simply cannot expect our "leaders" to do what they should do until we pick up our own back yards. Similarly, how can the U.S. berate other nations while ours is broken? And, by the way, that term "leaders" is really an oxymoron (or some similar word), isn't it? If we purport to live (or even want to) in a democratic nation, aren't we supposed to be the leaders? So, what do we have? Now that's something I can't get MY head around.
Yes, skepticism is good. Indeed, it is necessary. What is most troubling, however, is not that many are skeptical, but cynical. Cynicism cuts and destroys and stifles the willingness to extend ourselves because we think we already have the answer...and it is not good.
I agree that our engagement in the issues should be widened - and I welcome that and work to make it a reality. I really should just put what I have done in this vein in my tag line, as it may show that I am not so unidimensional. I have worked on several campaigns, from the national to the local. I have been a member of a 3rd party and worked to establish it in my state. I have written many letters and op-ed pieces in newspapers and some magazines. I am now working to create social networks of folks who are interested in working for a new kind of reality. I believe that these things are necessary, and call on each of us to keep doing this kind of work. Focusing on politicians being politicians gets us nowhere.
What I am simply about now is doing what I can to live right and to engage others to do the same. By all means, vote for whomever we believe in. Beyond that, however, expect little to change unless we remain engaged and creative.
"It is not true that it's one damn thing after another - it's one damn thing over and over." Edna St. Vincent Millay
.I remain at this forum because , amidst the chaff, are some well studied and well presented arguments. Though I may agree or disagree as topics change I always respect those who give thought to their positions. You are one who has my respect, if not my total agreement always.
I know that I have demonstrated a rather sharp tongue to some who I felt deserved at least that much. I have always detested ignorance, my own and others, as I do stalking and angry diatribe. I am weak enough to bait some into self exposure and damage my own repute by doing so. Posts like yours and those of several others here make me want to do better...Thanks for that as well as for a well defined argument.
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
I'm glad you're here.
Let me butt in and say I'm glad you are both here.
.Its a freaking love in...black lights, psychedelic shirts, pipe smoke and oh no a lava lamp too!.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
pass the roach clip....
.Damn, now Ive got the munchies.....
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
"Cynicism cuts and destroys and stifles the willingness to extend ourselves because we think we already have the answer...and it is not good."
Excellent point and good post. Thank you both.
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
We shall from now on.
Happily, I see you both as going to the same destination. Perhaps a blend of Debs, Teddy Roosevelt and Wendell Berry would get us there?
"Happily, I see you both as going to the same destination."
I think most of here are going to the same destination - albeit, a hazy, not well-defined one. The more we interact and communicate and especially, work, with each other, the more defined we will make it.
In the meantime, I'm honored to be on the journey with folks here. The ones who care enough to really work through the shit are my compatriots!
.Wendell Berry?!? You show off you....;-)
A socialist, a horseman and a tobacco farmer will save us all.....
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Hey, throw in a bit of regulated Buffet to pay for it and you have a fairly good government! Berry and I think in the same vein about some things.
Also, in response to your last paragraph...too bad this administration is full staffed by people like that.
Many thanks for your comment and in particular, your last paragraph. Beautiful and right on!
I cannot tell you how much better I feel that Greenspan admits he made a mistake.
Idealogues will screw up everything they touch because they can't concieve parts of their ideology might be wrong or even toxic.
Does this mean he's going to personally kick in to help out all those folks that he advised to buy adjustrable rate mortgages?
.If you heard him at the hearing in question you would have noted that his "admission" was insincere, self excusatory ( is that really a word?)and strictly limited to only one mistake, trusting the shareholders to police their banks business decisions.
Meanwhile a lot of folks are sitting on piles of money while the world's economy teeters on the brink of collapse..Excuse me now while I clean and oil my weapons...
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
I did see the heasring and self excusatory is a word now if it wasn't before.
Paulson was taking notes for the future I'm sure.
'Right-wing libertarians are the most delusional people on the planet.'
No. That honor might actually go to writers like David Corn who want us to believe that Alan Greenspan was actually opposed by the Democratic Party all these many, many years.
Right-wing libertarians are the most delusional people on the planet.