<bq author="Gustav Le Bon" source="A Study of the Popular Mind">The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.<fn></bq> <bq author="P.T. Barnum">There's one born every minute.</bq> Most of us don't follow the markets very assiduously. We buy into pensions or mutual funds or get CDs or money-market funds at the bank or we just have a savings account with decent interest. That is the sum total of our investment or retirement strategy. Others juggle credit cards in various stages of decrepitude, just trying to keep a humble lifestyle afloat in a bad situation or trying to keep a good lifestyle afloat beyond our means. Then there are the millions for whom simply treading water would be a sweet, welcome relief. The percentage of people even marginally aware of what was going on macro-economically is vanishingly small. Even most of the employees at the investment banks currently earning our combined scorn were oblivious. There are, at most, a handful of people at these banks responsible for most of the losses. Most people will deny that the system is broken because they will not be able to process just how crooked and ridiculous it has become. It is self-governing and makes up its own rules as it goes along and it is a ferocious cannibal, a reflexovore even, like the fabled Ouroboros<fn> encircling our world and slowly choking it to death as it chews its way further up its own spine. But, leaving the more poetic imagery to the side, few of us have kept up on the mechanics and fine-print behind the latest financial instruments to emerge fully-formed from the brows of the best and the brightest in the finance industry. It's a safe bet that most government officials also have no idea what's going on. None at all. They just know that something's horribly wrong and it's happening on their watch and that the cushy life they know and love is threatened. Be happy that they feel threatened, because threats to others rarely seem to move them. <h>Straight to the Second Stage: Anger</h> Reading the internet can give you the impression that people are pissed and maybe they are. But, when you hear about people that get pissed in other countries, you hear about marches in the hundreds of thousands, about shit getting set on <i>fire</i> and you hear about the people responsible for the situation that has everyone pissed being ridden out of town on a rail. In certain places, you hear about ad-hoc, vigilante-style executions. In the current case, there would be a lot of guys in suits up against the wall, feeling extremely nervous about the cigarette being offered them in apparent good faith. If people were mad, that is. The fairy tales of populist democracy in action from other countries always sound so cool---with them ending up with a shaky government held together with spit and a coathanger, but <i>dammit</i>, at least they've got some new jackasses in control, for once and they put the ones that caused all the trouble out to pasture or stripped them of their cash and homes and possessions and, possibly, lives. So have we got that in the States? Do we even do uprisings anymore? Or are we too busy for that shit? We treat protesting like its a weekend thing, that you do once in a while, like walking a 5k for charity. Instead, we're so docile that the perpetrators are currently trying to turn this debacle into yet another money-making opportunity for themselves. You can't really blame them, that's just how they tick. Fish gotta swim and so on. But you don't have to <i>let</i> them. There is anger to be found, and sometimes quite humorous anger, like in this aptly-, though crudely-titled article, <a href="http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=11356" source="Balloon Juice" author="John Cole">You Have To Be Shitting Me</a>; John Cole is clearly furious: <bq>In other words, folks spent years making billions upon billions of dollars on risky transactions, more money on the stock of companies that was artificially high based on those transactions, more money bundling all those transactions into more transactions, and made a killing, and when it turns out the whole thing is a big pile of shit, you and I get the god damned bill.<fn> [...] I do not ever want to hear another damned word about the free market. I don’t want to hear another thing about letting the market regulate itself. I don’t want to hear about the free flow of capital. [...] None of it. From superfunds to super-bailouts, I am tired of other people getting rich being irresponsible and then being told I have to pay to clean it up.</bq> <img attachment="tmmda080922.gif" align="right" class="frame" caption="Stay Calm. I'm on My Way">He is, of course, referring to the $700 billion plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. It's infuriating chutzpah. You get a hankering for some tar and feathers just reading the proposal. And Paulson's a f&$%#ing <i>functionary</i>, for Christ's sake; he's an <i>appointee</i>! Where does he get off proposing extra-constitutional powers like that for himself? You see how easy it is to get angry? If you actually <i>see</i> what's happening, you get angry. People are not descending on Washington and Wall Street with pitchforks and torches, ergo, they do not yet truly understand what's going on. Instead, they're still hopeful that they can get everything back with one big, trillion dollar gamble, willing to bet their futures as long as everybody else is too. The article <a href="http://www.alternet.org/workplace/99895/let's_stop_the_greatest_theft_in_the_history_of_humankind/" source="AlterNet" author="Otto Spengler">Let's Stop the Greatest Theft in the History of Humankind</a> posits some very interesting sociological theory as possible driver behind this behavior, to whit: <iq>Americans are so deep in the hole that they might as well keep putting borrowed quarters into the one-armed bandit.</iq> And why not? Any gains in other "safe" investments they made---be it tech stocks, houses or even the S&P 500, which is right back where it was 11 years ago---haven't worked out any better than pure luck, anyway. <h>There Oughta be a Law</h> <img attachment="po080922.gif" align="left" class="frame" caption="No.">Even if you managed to keep a cool head so far, you'll lose it when you realize that you haven't heard the words "criminal" or "charges" or "criminal charges" or "good, old-fashioned hanging". Not once. Because whether or not what happened was technically legal, it was most certainly immoral, unethical and wholly counterproductive. It is precisely to prevent such ego-centric idiocy that we have a civilization, a structured society and a government. There is little difference between the global finance system and monkeys clubbing one another over the head. The strongest and/or sleaziest wins. If you're not willing to be sleazier than almost everyone else, you better be good at grabbing your ankles. All you hear is that we must do this for the good of the system, which keeps us all alive. We are being asked to save <i>The Matrix</i>; being asked keep the nutrients coming in and the energy running out. We are co-conspirators in our own demise. <hr> <ft>This is a most excellent small treatise on the nature of crowds and group mentality, originally written in French in 1895. The translation from the French I referenced is an excellent translation, still available and highly recommended.</ft> <ft>I know it as an ancient Norse myth of a snake that ate its own tail as it encircled Midgard. It turns out that the name is Greek and that the Norse version is called <i>Jörmungandr</i>, but what the hell, I learned most of my Norse mythology from Marvel comic books, so there were bound to be some transcription errors.</ft> <ft>I have made a massive effort to keep myself from adding [sic] behind every missing hyphen in that punctuationally frightening sentence.</ft>