Image is everything. Or at least 99%, or so it seems.
It obviously worked for Madoff, but the sad truth seems to be that Madoff was just a petty thief compared to our more accomplished operators.
In 2008, September 18, my blog explored the conditions that have eroded our trust in everything, just as the true dimensions of our financial crisis were beginning to manifest. We are now three years down the road from those momentous events. And the echos persist.
Barry Ritholtz' recent article, The Big Lie Goes Viral, gives further testament to perverse and pervasive mutilation of fact and truth in the media and public discourse in general as the spin-meisters seek to revise the history of the debt crisis, much like Bill O'Reilly has apparently succeeded in revising the history of Lincoln's assassination to the dissatisfaction of Ford Theater (which has banned the book), and Newt Gingrich revises the rest of history.
The disturbing part of this is that the deceit of these perps is exceeded only by the shallowness of the consuming public. This is a recurring theme in James Howard Kunstler's blog, marveling at society's seemingly infinite willingness to submit to spiritual and philosophical rape by its various leaderships.
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I can't leave the subject of illusion without mentioning the scandal at Penn State involving the serial molestation of young boys, aided and abetted by an institution of, yes, 'higher learning', which put its basest of its enterprises, pre-professional football, on a pedestal higher than the protection of human souls. The rioting that followed the revelations and firing of the University's heretofore esteemed coach spoke volumes of the moral and ethical teachings and value system of this institution. All illusion. Charity as a mask for a pedophile. Football as a measure of institutional greatness. Empathy for the victims as salve for an institutional conscience, if there is one, that should remain scared and tortured long after the headlines have faded and three new freshmen are enrolled by the courts in the State Pen.
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Meanwhile, around the country, Occupy Wall Street encampments are being evicted from the public spaces. These encampments are also illusions, much like our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan were illusions. In all cases, the real battle is not for real estate, but for hearts and minds. We've lost that in Iraq and Afghanistan. OWS can lose it here if they fail to realize that street theater is illusion and nothing more. Their work needs to be in town hall meetings, share holder meetings, pension fund meetings, court rooms, television studios, delivering fact and truth and defensible logic. They need to go home, get a good meal and a good night's sleep, and gird themselves for the battles that matter in the venues that matter.
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Favorite bumper sticker wisdom of the day:
"The system isn't broken;
It's 'fixed'."
Onward
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