Stupid People

Premise: The world consists of a great mass of stupid people who are ruthlessly exploited by the greedy. There is a small minority of people who fit in neither category. I am one, and this blog is for those others of you out there.

The unfortunate problem for us is that we are caught up in the chaos created by this situation.

For example, the current economic situation. It is the considered opinion of the mass media that no one foresaw this crisis. That it came upon us without warning and is, as one of the bankers responsible said- a once in a century hurricane.

Well, that's bogus.

A number of well known and respected writers and economists predicted this many times. For example, in the May 2006 issue of Harper's Magazine Michael Hudson puts forth a somewhat leftist, almost conspiracy theory explanation of the then building real estate bubble. This was more than 2 years before the collapse of Lehman Brothers. And in July of 2007 Richard Bookstaber, a hedge fund quant, published his book " A Demon Of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation. This was about the quants bringing on the destruction of Long Term Capital Management. This showed how we were already on the way to the Great Recession. The respected magazine The Economist was talking about the real estate bubble for years prior to the disaster we are all experiencing.
There are many other examples of this. But did anybody pay attention?

Well the great unwashed didn't. The brain dead sheep were getting mortgages for no money down, flipping properties, and dreaming of a real estate market where prices always went up. And the bankers and finance mavens kept dreaming up new ways to package these loans that had no chance of being paid back, earning huge fees along the way, and the regulators who didn't have a clue, rated them as safe investments.

So it went on and on until the train went over the cliff.

But what I want to discuss in this blog is not that specifically, altho with my economics and finance background it is an area of interest and knowledge to me. What I want to talk about is what I will call The Vulcans. For lack of a better term I will call myself and others of a like mind after the rational beings from Star Trek. We didn't invest our life savings in complicated financial instruments, or take out balloon payment mortgages, or take part in the globalized Ponzi Scheme that is international finance, or rip off those who did. But we were dragged over the cliff with them anyway.

This is but the latest example of "The Marching Morons" a book I recommend. We live in this world of sheep and wolves and suffer for it.

So, What is To Be Done?

Well, that is what I will be writing about in the future. Because I don't just want to rant, altho it does feel good sometimes, but to propose solutions, or ideas. And mine will be more in line with those in the above mentioned story, than those of Marx and Engels.

That's all for now folks.

Welcome

Welcome to Critical Mass. This blog is the result of several pounds of warped grey matter trapped within my skull. I am an observer of society, but not the nice face put on it by the spin-meisters, but rather the reality underneath . For surprise-surprise, what appears to be going on out there isn't what's happening. But something else.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, altho I don't totally discount all conspiracies, but I also am not an idiot that believes everything he is told by the powers that be. So my take on the 'reality' of the US and the world will be posted here. With an emphasis on the economics of the situation since that is where my training lies. And it is a good way to tell what is happening. As the boys of the Washington Post were told all those years ago-"Follow The Money"

See you all (?) later.